Simple black and white loaf cake (cozonăcel)

Easter is almost here and for us it's the first we have to spend away from home. Hopefully the last too. As consolation for this, we decided to go with tradition on almost every meal we'll have these days, which means, as far as sweets are concerned, Romanian pasca and cozonac (click the links if you want to see how we make some versions of the originals). 
Because we've already done a semi-sweet cozonac (linked above) at some point in the past and other activities kinda' press on our time, we decided to make this black and white loaf cake instead on cozonac. „Cozonăcel” means little cozonac :).
For people like us, a long way away from home where someone in the family makes these or you can buy them from staple cafeterias, for people who would like a taste of Eastern Europe Easter cake or a taste of home but are not that skilled in the kitchen or don't have enough time for the yeast-rising dough, this is the closest they'll get to it. Enjoy and have a Happy Easter, wherever you are.





Ingredients (makes a small loaf):

• 350 g butter (plus a little extra for greasing the pan)
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract (or 1 vial vanilla essence)
• 330 g sugar
• 7 eggs
• 350 g flour
• 80 g ground almonds (you can substitute with walnuts, peanuts, hazelnuts etc)
• 1 envelope baking powder
• pinch of salt
• 3-4 tablespoons cocoa powder

For the glaze:

• 50 g powdered sugar
• 1 and 1/2 tablespoons water

Preheat the oven to 175 degrees C. Melt the butter in a medium-large pot:

Put it in a food processor with the sugar, salt and vanilla (or in a large bowl and just mix by hand):

Mix until very even and almost fluffy. Mix the flour, baking powder and almonds in a bowl:

Add the eggs to the butter and sugar mix, one at a time.

Also add the flour mix:

When it's all even and has formed a batter, divide it in half. You can just pour half in the pot where you melted the butter:

Add the cocoa to one of the halves and mix well:

Well butter the loaf tin (ours was 30 cm long):

Pour half of each mixture on the lateral sides of the tin, making sure they don't mix too much:

Then pour the rest of each mixture crosswise (the rest of the black where you first poured the white and vice-versa):

Lightly pull a fork or knife through the mixture to create some swirls, but make sure you don't overdo it, the layers should still remain mostly separate (for the final aspect):

Put in the preheated oven and bake for 1 hour.

Mix the glaze (powdered sugar and water) and spread it on the cake while it's hot:

Let it cool a bit, then take out of the tin, slice and dig in! :)