Have you ever tried Turkish mosaic cake – mozaik pastası?
It’s our favourite Turkish chocolate cake.
Biscuits, chocolate sauce and a serving of fresh fruit on the side. What’s not to love?
I feel we’re in danger of losing our badge with this recipe. The badge of, ‘we haven’t got a sweet tooth,’ that we mention so often on this blog.
And yet, here we are with another yummy Turkish dessert recipe.
I’ll stand by that statement, though. We’re the type of people who peruse the shelves of the crisps and nuts aisle of the supermarket rather than the chocolate and biscuits aisles.
Turkish Mosaic Cake – Mozaik Pastası
But an occasional chocolate treat by way of this delicious cake recipe is a good idea.
‘A little bit of what you fancy,’ and all that.
It’s a popular cake both in Turkish households and in cafes and coffee shops. You’ll often see people out enjoying a Turkish coffee or a çay (Turkish tea) with slices of mosaic cake on the table.
And Barry’s mum loves it, too, so she’s a beneficiary when we do make it.
Not Lazy But Genius
Some people call mosaic cake a ‘lazy cake.’
Perhaps because it’s so quick and easy to make. But we prefer to call it ‘Genius.’
Inexpensive ingredients. Quick and easy to make and delicious and it looks the part, too.
And it’s a no bake cake. No worries about getting the oven at optimum temperature or keeping your eye on it to make sure it’s not overcooked.
Just a case of mixing and scooping all your chocolate mixture ingredients together to form into the shape of your choice before putting it in the freezer for a while.
A chocolate mosaic cake is a really easy dessert for reluctant bakers!
And it’s a perfect cake to make if you’re baking with the kids, too.
How To Make Turkish Mosaic Cake
Here’s how we make this easy no bake chocolate cake.
Why ‘Mosaic Cake?’
As you can see from the photos, the name of this no bake chocolate cake gets its name from the mosaic-like pattern you can see when you slice into the cake.
Whilst it looks really clever, it’s actually just formed by the broken biscuits – petit beurre biscuits – that are perhaps your main ingredient.
Any Brits that are reading, if you can’t get petit beurre biscuits, the very famous plain tea biscuits that we all know and love will to the same job.
Break each biscuit into four roughly equal parts and place them into a large mixing bowl.
Confession time: We have a tiny kitchen and have no space for large mixing bowls. A big saucepan does the job equally well!
The ‘Mortar’
All good mosaics need a mortar to keep them in place and our Turkish mosaic cake recipe is no different.
So, for this, we need to make a naughty-but-very-nice chocolate sauce.
Again, this is really quick and easy. For lots of recipes involving melted chocolate, the melted chocolate is done over a bain marie.
Not necessary for our mosaic cake recipe.
Our chocolate sauce will be made with melted butter, milk, cocoa powder, sugar and bitter chocolate.
First of all, the butter is melted over a low heat before we add the sugar.
As we whisk gently and the sugar dissolves, we add the milk and the cocoa powder. Then continue to whisk gently until the sauce is smooth.
Now we can add our bitter dark chocolate.
If it’s not already divided, just break your chocolate up into small squares or pieces before you add it to the sauce.
Tip: For a bit of extra flavour in our Turkish mosaic cake recipe, we buy 2 bars of bitter chocolate – one containing small pieces of orange and one containing small pieces of pistachio. It works really well.
Add your chocolate pieces and use a wooden spoon to start to stir them in.
And then, just as they start to melt, we’re going to remove the pan from the heat and stir the chocolate sauce until the chocolate squares have melted.
Building Our Mosaic Cake
It is completely up to you what shape you want your want your mosaic cake to be.
Whatever shape you choose, you’re going to need some cling film or other type of plastic wrap.
- Some people do their cake in the shape of a loaf pan.
- Some people make their mosaic cake into a long prism so that the smaller slices are a triangle shape.
- Others make a chocolate salami. This is what we do. A long roll. The slices are then circular.
But, first of all, the yummy gooey bit.
This is where you pour your chocolate sauce over your biscuits and stir everything together until the sauce has thoroughly coated your small pieces of biscuits.
Any remains in your pan – well, that’s up to you what you do with them. Take it from us that those remnants of chocolate sauce taste lovely, though.
And you’re just making the pan a bit cleaner before you wash it…
Make Your Chocolate Roll
As we said, we do a chocolate salami shape for our Turkish mosaic cake.
We line a loaf tin with cling film, making sure the cling film overflows around the sides.
Then you can empty your biscuits and chocolate sauce mixture in the loaf tin.
Use the back of a spoon to gently compact and bring your cake mixture together and then fold the edges of your plastic wrap over so that your mosaic cake is completely encased.
Now you can just roll it on a flat surface so that it’s in a long sausage shape.
All done.
Into the freezer for at least a couple of hours before serving.
How To Serve Your Mosaic Cake
As we said above, mosaic cake is a popular cake ordered in Turkish coffee shops to enjoy and share over a çay, a coffee and a chat.
If you’re serving it at home, we love to eat it with some fresh seasonal fruit or some vanilla ice cream – or both.
Cut your slices of cake whilst it is hard from the freezer and then leave the slices for a few minutes to start coming to room temperature.
Turkish Mosaic Cake Recipe – FAQs
Yes, this is an ideal do-ahead dish. Keep it in the freezer and slice pieces as and when you need them.
Feel free to experiment with different biscuits for your cake. In Turkey, petit beurre biscuits are used because these give the white flecks that resemble a mosaic.
British chef Jamie Oliver made a quick mosaic cake using smashed ginger biscuits. He also added mini marshmallows to the mix.
Yes. In Turkey, some recipes included chopped hazelnuts or pistachios.
Mosaic cake is enjoyed all over Europe and other parts of the world. In Greece, it is called mosaiko and they sometimes add a splash of alcohol to their cake mix.
This would be a nice idea for a sweet treat on your Christmas table.
Whilst we use dark chocolate, we buy bars that have flavours in them. We use a chocolate orange flavour and bar containing bits of pistachio.
This is great for both flavour and texture and means you don’t need to buy extra ingredients.
Turkish Mosaic Cake Recipe – Mozaik Pastası
Let’s make our easy chocolate mosaic cake.
Turkish Mosaic Cake Recipe
Equipment
- 1 mixing bowl
- 1 saucepan
- 1 loaf tin
- 1 hand whisk
- 1 wooden spoon
- Cling film
Ingredients
- 300 grams petit beurre biscuits approximately 1.5 packets
- 125 grams butter
- 100 grams dark chocolate broken into small chunks
- 25 grams cocoa powder roughly 3 dessert spoonfuls
- 75 grams sugar approximately
- 200 millilitres fresh whole milk
Instructions
- First of all, break your biscuits into rough quarters and place them in your mixing bowl.
- Over a low heat, melt your butter in your saucepan.
- Once the butter is melted add your sugar and your cocoa, whisking, slowly.
- Whilst you are whisking, add your milk and keep whisking slowly until your mixture is smooth.
- Now add your chocolate and stir slowly with a wooden spoon.
- As your chocolate starts to melt, remove your pan from the heat and keep stirring until all the chocolate has melted.
- Give your chocolate sauce a couple of minutes to cool a little and then pour it over your broken biscuit pieces.
- Stir the biscuits around until they are completely coated in the chocolate sauce and have started to soak it up.
- Now line a loaf tin with cling film, making sure the cling film overflows by a few centimetres around the edges.
- Spoon your chocolatey biscuit mixture into the loaf tin and gently press down to compact the mixture.
- Fold the cling film over the cake so that it is completely encased and tip it out onto a flat surface.
- Roll it into a cylindrical shape and then place in the freezer for a couple of hours until it is set.
- When you are ready to serve your cake, you can cut slices from it straight from the freezer. Allow around 5 minutes for your cake to start coming towards room temperature. It should be eaten cold.
- Serve on its own or with fresh fruit and / or ice cream.
Notes
- As with all of our recipes, the calories for our no bake mosaic cake are approximate.
- Our recipe makes approximately 12 slices of mosaic cake. Allow 2 slices per serving.
- In Turkey, cocoa powder is sold in 25g sachets. One of these is enough for our mosaic cake recipe.
- We use whatever sugar we have in the house for our cake. Brown or white is fine.
- Feel free to experiment with different biscuit types. Petit beurre are used for the classic recipe but you can get different flavours and textures from other types.
- Likewise with the chocolate. We use chocolate with orange and pistachio nuts added.
- Some people also add crumbled hazelnuts to their cake.