Where I’m from, if someone offered a green onion cake, they’d be looked at with incredulity. Green onion. In a cake. What kind of weird April Fool’s Day joke is that? Cakes are SWEET, not savory! Everybody knows that!
Fast forward a few years and I live thousands of miles away, in a place where people eat green onion cakes regularly – as street food! I resisted until one day I saw giant, flaky, fluffy green onion cakes served in a local restaurant and knew it was time. WOW! I love them! The folding of the dough creates pockets similar to puff pastry and the green onion breathes just enough moisture and flavour into the dough to create softness. Without a deep fat fryer, they will not be quite as big and fluffy, but they still taste wonderfully good! Let’s do this!
In a bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, salt, olive oil and water. Mix until you have a ball of dough. Knead the dough until it resists your efforts (about 10 minutes). Let the dough rest, covered, for half an hour.
While you wait for the gluten in the flour to work on the dough, slice up one bunch of fresh green onions.
Slice the dough into 8 equal portions.
Roll out each piece of dough as thinly as possible. Sprinkle a handful of green onion pieces on top of the dough and then roll the dough like a cinnamon roll to encapsulate the green onion inside. The spiral of this tube is the layers. Now, starting at one end, roll the dough into a spiral and pinch the remaining end of the tube into the dough beside it so the green onion can’t escape.
Nowhere to run to, nowhere to hide…
Pick the dough up and then set it back down on the work surface so that the end you just pinched in is on the bottom – it will look like the wheel of a car. Now, gently roll the dough again to make it as flat as possible. Don’t worry if some of the onion shows – it’s like when you are happy – it’s always better if a little spills out!
Once all 8 have been rolled out, it’s time to cook them. While deep frying is the best option, I just don’t have that kind of equipment, so my options are bake or fry. I chose to try making a batch both ways to see what worked the best. For both methods, use a silicone brush to brush 1 tablespoon of olive oil on both sides of the cakes (it only takes one tablespoon to coat all 8 cakes on both sides – we’re using the oil sparingly). Then, you can put the cakes on a baking sheet into a preheated 375 degree Fahrenheit oven for 10 minutes OR you can fry them in a frying pan for a minute or two on each side.
Top – baked and flat
Bottom – fried and fluffy
Verdict? Tanned, fluffy and fried, please!
At this point, you can eat every last one, or wrap what is left and put it in the refrigerator for later. These little gems can be easily reheated in a toaster, toaster oven, microwave or conventional oven. They’re fantastic as is or coated in the dip of your choice! People here like sriracha sauce on them, but my favourites are warm peanut butter or cool and tangy tzatziki.
Enjoy!
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Green Onion Cakes
These green onion cakes are street food that easily transition from appetizer to main course. Bet you can’t eat just one!
Prep time: 45 minutes
Cook time: 10 – 15 minutes
Total time: 1 hour
Yield: 8
Calories per serving: 126
Fat per serving: 5.7 g
Ingredients
- 1 small bunch green onions, sliced
- 1 1/2 cups white all purpose flour
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 2 tablespoons olive oil
- 2 teaspoons double acting baking powder
- 1/2 cup warm water (nothing special – just from the tap)
- 1 tablespoon olive oil to baste the cakes with before cooking
Cooking Directions
- Combine the flour, baking powder, salt, water and 2 tablespoons of olive oil in a bowl. Knead the dough until it resists your efforts (10 minutes). Let it rest for half an hour in a covered bowl.
- Wash and thinly slice the green onions. Set aside.
- Separate the dough into 8 equal portions. Roll each portion out as thinly as possible and sprinkle with green onion. Roll the dough like a cinnamon roll to keep the onion inside. Take the resultant tube of dough and roll it into a spiral, pinching the remaining outside end in so that no onion can escape.
- Pick up each dough package and set it down on top of the pinched part. Roll out the dough again as thinly as possible.
- Use a silicone brush to baste each side of the cakes with a small amount of olive oil (the remaining tablespoon).
- Fry the cakes in a hot frying pan for a minute or two on each side OR bake them in a 375 degree Fahrenheit oven for 10 minutes.
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Feel like switching out the green onions for scallions or leeks? Want to know the changed nutritional content? Use the link to Lose it! below so that you can play with the recipe:
https://loseit.com/#Settings:Shared%20Items!id=8fa1f34a851d4d349dfafbad8e683fe2|user=14960960
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A few notes for you, darling:
- I tried making this recipe with multigrain bread flour. It was hard to roll and the cakes were very small, but they had better flavour than the cakes I made with plain white all purpose flour. Because the multigrain cakes refused to rise, I chose to use white flour since the cakes are meant to be fluffy.
- Use double acting baking powder. Single acting baking powder will make the dough rise as soon as the ingredients are combined, but nothing happens after that. Double acting baking powder fluffs up when it meets the wet ingredients and then it fluffs up again when it is cooked.
Cutie Cooks 