Cinnamon swirl cake with nuts
Once I came across an Italian cake that looked just like the Danish cinnamon swirl cake. It turned out to be an unorthodox version of ‘presnitz’. A specialty from Trieste in Friuli-Venezia Giulia.
Most of the time Presnitz is baked as a rolled up sausage, which means the inner swirls are not visible until the cake has been sliced. In this version the ‘sausage’ roll is sliced and the slices are then pressed into a greased baking dish. I have also adapted the recipe a little adding yeast, brown sugar and cinnamon to make it more like the Danish pastry version we know as cinnamon swirl cake.
Ingredients
For the dough
25 g yeast
2 tbsp luke warm water
4 tbsp luke warm milk
1 lemon (juice)
100 g melted butter
250 g flour
100 sugar
1 egg
A pinch of salt
For the filling
100 g butter
100 g brown sugar
2 tbsp cinnamon
50 g almonds
50 g walnuts
50 g hazelnuts
50 g pinenuts
50 g raisins soaked in rum
Preparation
Dissolve the yeast in water and milk
Add melted butter and egg. And mix with flour, sugar, lemon juice and salt
Knead the pastry well until it becomes soft and shiny and does not stick to your fingers.
Cover the pastry with a wet cloth and leave it to raise for 1 hour.
Mix butter with cinnamon and brown sugar for the filling.
Chop all the nuts and raising finely.
Roll out the pastry in a big rectangle
Spread the filling over the pastry.
Sprinkle with chopped raisins and nuts and roll the dough up as a sausage.
Cut the sausage in 3 cm slices and place them from the center and out in a pre-greased baking dish.
Press the swirls down to make them fit the dish.
Bake for 40 minutes at 180 C / 350 F.
Dust the cinnamon swirl cake with icing sugar before serving.
More recipes like cinnamon swirl cake
Buccellato – Sicilian Christmas wreath

In Trieste the cinnamon swirl cake goes under the name presnitz
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Thank you for the recipe, Mette :) I like cinnamon a lot…
You’ll definitely like this cake then.
This looks and sounds absolutely spectacular, Mette! Why is for some reason I’m always reading your food posts BEFORE I’ve eaten ha, ha! I wanted to ask you…what are your thoughts on using Salted vs Unsalted butter? Thank you :)
Good question Mike, but I think you need more refined taste buds than mine to tell the difference between salted and unsalted butter. And if there wasn’t salt in the butter, you have to add it to the dough to enhance the flavour.
My husband would think he’d died and gone to heaven if this showed up on the breakfast table.
You should give him that treat one day then:)
Oh, I know this one! I will have to try your version. Up north they make the most wonderful cinnamon and nut yeast breads, don’t they?
They do. But I don’t think they are half as popular as in Denmark, where we use them for pastries and eat them for breakfast.