Ispanakh Kek -Turkish Spinach Cake

One of my collegues is of Turkish heritage. We often talk food. Her daughter loves to cook and so she loves to eat. We talked about cakes which contain a vegetable as a source for the moisture. We both love carrot cakes.
Then she told me about a special sweet cake that all the family loves. A day later she handed me a recipe.

A very green cake with a white and green topping. It looks interesting. Spinach in a sweet cake was new to me. Carrot, pumpkin, courgette and even parsnip are a good source of moisture in a cake. I even baked a cake with beetroot a couple of years ago.

I looked at the recipe and the measure was not in gramms or milliliters or american cups. It said to use a glass. I asked my collegue and she show me one of our coffee cups- around 230 ml. I filled mine up to 220 ml.

She also told me that many people just use frozen spinach, even the famous German frozen ground spinach with added cream in (Iglo Rahmspinat mit dem Blubb).
I decided against that and used fresh baby spinach.
The recipe did not have any added flavouring. When I tried the batter after I added the spinach, it was just sweet and bland. I added a bit of flavour.

recipe for a 23x23 cm cake tin:
1 glass spinach puree, just the leaves- not the stalks  (about 200 g fresh spinach)
1 glass sunflower oil
1 glass sugar
3 large free range eggs
1 pinch of salt
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp yuzu
2 drops pandan extract (optional)
1 tbsp vanilla sugar
2 tsp baking powder
1 1/5 glass flour

topping:
200 ml double cream
100 ml ricotta
2 tsp cream stiff
1/2 tsp dried lemon zest

Preheat the oven 170 C.
The fresh spinach without the stems needs to be in a colander and you pour 1 liter of boiling water over the leaves. Drain and then squeeze out the excess water. Put in a blender and mix.
Beat eggs and sugar together.
Add flour mixed with baking powder and salt and then the oil.
Now pour in the spinach and beat again.
The batter will look yellow with green specks. To make it more green, add a bit of pandan extract.

Pour in a baking dish and bake for 40 min. Cool down completely.
Take a knife and cut off the edges around the cake to show the green. Crumble the cake pieces and set aside.
Mix ricotta and cream with the cream stiff and beat until smooth. Put that on top of the cake.
I cut the cake in 2 parts and made them into a sandwich cake, spreading some cream mix in the middle. Easier to take to the office in the morning and it looks awesome with its layers

Sprinkle the cake crumbs on top.

I offered it at 8:30 AM and it was gone at noon.