Vasilopita – Greek New Year’s Eve Cake

To go with our Greek meal with a load of friends at our house for New Year’s Eve, I made this traditional Greek New Year’s cake.  All over Greece it is baked every New Year’s Eve in honour of Saint Basil whose feast day is the first of January.  ‘Pita’ in Greek can mean a loaf of bread, a pie or a cake; ‘Vasilopita’ means ‘Saint Basil’s Cake.’  Baked with a coin hidden inside it, the cake is cut at midnight as the New Year dawns and a slice given to each member of the family or friends at the table, in order of age from eldest to youngest.  The person who finds the coin is said to have good luck for the new year. 

The story behind it is that one year in the last half of the fourth century, during a time of terrible famine, the emperor levied a sinfully excessive tax upon the people of Caesarea. The tax was such a heavy burden upon the already impoverished people that to avoid prison each family had to relinquish its few remaining coins and pieces of jewellery, including precious family heirlooms. Learning of this injustice upon his flock, the archbishop of Caesarea, Saint Basil the Great, called upon the emperor to repent.  The emperor agreed to cancel the tax and instructed his tax collectors to turn over to Saint Basil all of the chests containing the coins and jewellery which had been paid as taxes by the people of Caesarea.  But now Saint Basil was faced with the daunting and impossible task of returning these thousands of coins and pieces of jewellery to their rightful owners. He decided to bake all the treasures inside a great big ‘pita’ and called all the townspeople to the cathedral where he blessed and cut the pita, giving a piece to each person. Miraculously, each owner received their own valuables in their slice of Vasilopita!

Ingredients

7 oz unsalted butter, softened

10 oz golden caster sugar

4 eggs

1 tsp vanilla extract

1 tbsp grated clementine zest

1 tsbp grated lemon zest

12 oz self-raising flour

1 tsp baking powder

4 oz ground almonds

6 fl oz milk

4 tbsp brandy

Juice of 1 lemon

Juice of 1 clementine

A £1 coin, washed and wrapped in silver foil

3 tbsp flaked almonds

Icing sugar, for dusting

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 180°C and grease and line a 9-inch round cake tin.
2. In a large bowl, cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.
3. Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition.
4. Stir in the vanilla and citrus zest.
5. In a separate bowl placed on weighing scales, sift in the flour to weigh it out and mix in the baking powder and ground almonds.
6. In a measuring jug, add the milk, brandy and citrus juices and stir to combine.
7. Alternate adding the flour mixture and milk mixture to the cake batter, beating well after each addition.
8. Pour the batter into the cake tin.  Insert the foil-wrapped coin vertically into the cake and smooth the batter over the top. Sprinkle with flaked almonds and bake for 50 to 60 minutes or until a skewer inserted in the centre comes out clean.
9. Let the cake cool in the tin for 10 minutes before turning out onto a wire rack to cool completely.
10. Dust with icing sugar before serving, cutting out the numbers of the new year to use as a stencil (or a doily for a pattern) if you like.