Eggless Italian Rose Cake, Torta Delle Rose Del Garda

          For this month's Eggless Baking Challenge, we had a real challenge, Italian Rose Cake, Torta Delle Rose Del Garda, suggested by Gayathri. After reading the recipe, I was not sure about doing it, the recipe called for so many eggs and there were number of steps involved. But then, I went ahead with it and the end result was absolutely worth all the time and effort. The cake came out very good and tasted really too good. It was so soft and buttery, a very rich cake, make sure you have people around you to share it..

Need To Have
Starter Dough

• All Purpose Flour/ Maida - 1/3 cup + 1 tablespoon
• Active Dry Yeast - 11/2 teaspoon
• Sugar - 1/4 teaspoon
• Warm Water - 21/2 tablespoon
• Milk - 1/8 cup minus 1 tablespoon

Second Dough

• All Purpose Flour/ Maida - 1/6 cup + 1/2 tablespoon
• Curd/ Yogurt - 11/2 tablespoon

Third Dough

• All Purpose Flour/ Maida - 1/6 cup + 1/2 tablespoon
• Oil - 1/2 tablespoon
• Sugar - 2 teaspoon

Final Dough

• All Purpose Flour/ Maida - 3 cups + 2 tablespoon
• Flax Seed Powder - 1/4 cup
• Warm Water - 3/4 cup
• Butter - 31/2 tablespoon
• Oil - 31/2 tablespoon
• Sugar - 1/4 cup + 3 tabelespoon
• Honey - 1 tablespoon
• Orange Peel - 1 tablespoon, grind it coarsely
• Zest Of One Orange
• Vanilla Extract - 2 teaspoon
• Baking Soda - 1 teaspoon
• Salt - 1 teaspoon

To Finish 

• Butter - 150 gms, approximately 10 1/2 tablespoons
• Sugar - 1/2 cup

Syrup

• Sugar - 1 cup
• Water - 1 cup
• Orange Marmalade - 2 tablespoons

Original Recipe : A Kingdom For A Cake

Method

          Starter : Add the warm water to the yeast and sugar and leave it to foam up. Then add it to the flour and using the milk, make a sticky dough and leave it covered till it triples in volume.

          Second Dough : Add the flour and curd to the starter dough, make a dough and again leave it to triple.

          Third Dough : Mix the flour, sugar and oil and make a dough

          Final Dough : Soak the flax seed powder in the warm water and leave for 10 minutes. Now beat together, the flax seed powder mix, sugar, oil and butter, then mix in the honey, vanilla extract, salt, baking soda, orange zest and the orange peel.

          Now add the flour and make a soft dough, then add the third dough and mix it. Then dusting some flour, knead the dough for 20 to 25 minutes ( don't skip this step ), then cover and leave it for 5 to 6 hours. At this stage, I put the dough in the refrigerator and continued with the recipe, the next day.

          Next day, punch down the dough, roll it out, spread 1/4 of the butter given under ' to finish ', fold it as shown, once at both ends, then fold into half, leave it in the fridge for 15 minutes. Then remove, roll out, apply another 1/4 of the butter, fold and leave it in the fridge for another 15 minutes, do this one more time.

          The last time, leave it a little longer in the fridge, so that you can roll out thinly ( about 5 mm thick ), then apply the last 1/4 part of the butter, spread the sugar, roll it tightly and slice it into 8 pieces. Line a round pan with parchment paper, then keep 8 muffin liners as shown.

          Place the 8 slices in the muffin liners, cover with a thin cloth and leave for 4 to 5 hours ( I had refrigerated the dough at this stage and took out the pan the next day morning, left it out to rise and then did the baking ).

          Bake at 180 C for 45 to 55 minutes, halfway through, cover with a aluminium foil , to prevent the top of the cake from browning too much. In the meantime, heat the sugar and water to make the syrup, when it becomes thick, remove and mix in the marmalade. Once the cake is cooled to room temperature, apply the warm syrup and leave to cool completely, then pull out rose by rose and enjoy.

Note
I had done the whole process across 3 days, made the final dough on the first day, applied the butter and rolling the second day, did the baking the third day.
The original recipe used only butter, I replaced some of it with oil.