Estonian layered curd cheese cake (kihiline kohupiimakook)

The photo is from January 2008 

We love our curd cheese cakes in Estonia - and you'll find at least five curd cheese cake recipes here on my blog. This particular one is one of the most common curd cheese cakes out there. It uses a shop-bough yellow cake mix ("Juubeli tordipulber" or "Jubileum cake mix"), making it super-quick to assemble, and many Estonian cooks would have a packed somewhere in the kitchen drawer, just in cake. I'm an avid baker, love baking from scratch, and I do, just in cake :)

I'm posting it here, as someone was looking for the English recipe and I realised I hadn't shared it yet.

It's lovely when enjoyed lukewarm, with a glass of cold milk, but it's also really nice when completely cooled and accompanied with a cup of coffee or tea or cacao.

Layered curd cheese cake

(Kihiline kohupiimakook)
Feeds 6 to 8

400 g creamy curd cheese
200 g sour cream (20% fat content is perfect)
4 eggs (L)
4 Tbsp caster sugar
1 yellow cake mix (450 g)
50 g butter
a handful of seedless raisins (optional)

Break the eggs into the mixing bowl, add sugar and whisk until thick, pale and frothy. Gently fold in the curd cheese and sour cream (and raisins, if using).

Butter a Ø 26 cm (10 inch) cake tin or springform tin.

Sprinkle 1/3 of the cake mix (still dry, in its powder form!) onto the base, then scatter small dots of butter on top.

Gently pour or spoon half of the wet mixture into the tin. Now scatter half of the remaining dry cake mix into the tin, cover with the rest of the wet mixture and then the rest of the dry cake mixture. Scatter the remaining butter on top.

Bake in the middle of a pre-heated 200 C oven for 35-40 minutes, until the cake is golden brown and cooked through.

Let it cool before serving.