Serves a Crowd

Cardamom cake with cloudberry cream

by:
February  2, 2011
0
0 Ratings
Cardamom cake with cloudberry cream
  • Makes 1 9-inch cake
Author Notes

This one is another twist on a traditional Norwegian dessert (a pretty hefty proportion of Norwegian desserts and baked goods contain cardamom - we are as a people, cardamom fiends!), called krumkaker med multekrem. Krumkaker are light cone shaped cookies (spiced with cardamom), but they require a special iron to make, so I decided to replace them with a cake that keeps some of the same light, delicately spiced spirit of the cookies. The cloudberry cream is one of the most amazing accompaniments to the fragrance of the cardamom. Cloudberries are an arctic bog berry and they have an absolutely unique flavor. So, it is worth it to seek out the cloudberry jam - you can usually find it at Scandinavian specialty stores, and I think even IKEA! —fiveandspice

What You'll Need
Ingredients
  • Cardamom cake
  • 1/2 cup unsalted butter
  • 3 large eggs, at room temperature
  • 3/4 cup white sugar
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • 1 cup flour
  • 1/4 teaspoon salt
  • 2 teaspoons freshly ground cardamom
  • 1 teaspoon baking powder
  • Cloudberry cream
  • 1 1/2 cups heavy whipping cream
  • 1/3 cup cloudberry preserves or cloudberry jam
Directions
  1. Preheat the oven to 350F. Butter a 9-inch springform pan (it probably would work in another kind of cake pan too, but I pretty much always use my springform for cakes because it’s the best!). In a small bowl, stir together the flour, salt, cardamom and baking powder.
  2. In a saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat, and let it cook, stirring and continually scarping up any solids that form on the bottom of the pan. The butter will start to foam a lot, keep cooking and stirring! After about 6 or 7 minutes, it will start to turn nut brown and smell wonderfully toasty. At this point, remove it from the heat, and keep stirring a little while longer as it starts to cool. Set the butter aside, but don’t put it in a cold place (you don’t want it to solidify).
  3. In a standing mixer, whip the eggs on high speed for about 5 minutes, until they become light yellow and very fluffy. Then, add in the sugar and keep whipping for about another 5 minutes. The mixture will turn a very light lemon cream color and will have greatly increased in volume (in Norwegian this is called an eggedosis, which happens to be one of my favorite words!).
  4. Turn the speed down to low, and working quickly add the flour mixture and brown butter in a couple of stages, alternating between the two. When the flour and butter have just been incorporated into the batter, turn the mixer off. Gently use a spatula to make sure that any of the brown butter that has settled to the bottom is stirred back up into the batter, then scrape the cake batter into the cake pan.
  5. Bake the cake for about 40 minutes, until the toothpick/knife inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean. Cool on a cooing rack for 10 minutes. Then run a knife around the outside of the cake and remove the outside of the pan. Allow to cool a bit more before serving.
  6. Whip the heavy whipping cream until it is just barely beginning to show soft peaks, then add the cloudberry preserves and continue whipping until the cream forms stiff peaks. Serve the cake accompanied by the cream.
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15 Reviews

S.Neubeck
S.Neubeck February 5, 2018
I would use desi sugar(go to an Indian specialty store) in your neighbourhood.
 
Laureline
Laureline February 4, 2018
I was so looking forward to this cake and followed the directions exactly. However, after whipping the eggs for about 3 minutes on high in my stand mixer, as directed, the formerly very fluffy eggs started to lose volume. By the time I added sugar and whipped for another 5 minutes, as directed, the extra volume was mostly gone. The cake is in the oven now, but the batter yield was low. I feel I should have stopped whipping when the fluffiness factor was at its highest. Can you tell me why I got such flat results with volume, following your directions? Thank you.
 
fiveandspice
fiveandspice February 4, 2018
I’m sorry you had trouble! With baking you should always base your timing of things on the description of what it should look like, rather than the times given. Recipe authors give approximate times as guideposts, but the time it takes for eggs to whip or bread to rise or a cake to bake varies hugely from kitchen to kitchen and day to day depending on all sorts of things, even the weather! So, you are correct, it would have been best to stop whipping when the eggs were light and fluffy. I’m so sorry my timing approximations didn’t work for you!
 
Laureline
Laureline February 5, 2018
Thank you so much, Emily, for responding! I know you posted this recipe 7 years ago! I'm a very experienced cook, but I haven't made anything with the eggedosis techinque before, and since no one else mentioned a problem with the recommended time, I thought I'd uncharacteristically ( ;D) follow the exact directions and that the fluffiness might reappear. I turned my back on the mixer and when I turned back... fluffy had fled. I'm going to try again, because this recipe sounded positively celestial to me.
 
Linda V.
Linda V. January 25, 2018
I made this delicious cake for my cookbook club when we had a huge smorgasbord. It was a great success! Two points: I did not see where to use the vanilla extract. I realized it after the cake was in the oven and I was putting away all the ingredients. Secondly, I ended up straining the seeds from the IKEA cloudberry jam, since I didn't want to have everyone looking for dental floss or toothpicks. ;-) This meant that I needed to add more to the whipped cream. I will surely make this again. Thanks.
 
cheese1227
cheese1227 February 5, 2011
I think I need to look for some cloudberries.
 
fiveandspice
fiveandspice February 6, 2011
They're one of my absolute favorites. So worth searching out!!
 
fiveandspice
fiveandspice February 4, 2011
As Brooklynrosie pointed out, I forgot to list the quantity of butter! It's 1/2 cup.
 
fiveandspice
fiveandspice February 10, 2011
Fixed!
 
Brooklynrosie
Brooklynrosie February 4, 2011
This sounds amazing! I can't seem to find the amount of butter needed in the ingredients list, though it mentions browning the butter in the directions. How much butter is called for?
 
fiveandspice
fiveandspice February 4, 2011
Oh dear! I can't believe I left that out!!! It's kind of key. I find it so hard to remember to enter everything the way the recipe entering format is set up. Anyways, it's 1/2 cup butter. As soon as I can edit the recipe I'll make sure to add that in.
 
Midge
Midge February 3, 2011
Sounds heavenly, as do all your cardamom recipes. Time to write a Norwegian cookbook!
 
fiveandspice
fiveandspice February 3, 2011
Aww, thanks Midge! Man, I would love to write a Norwegian cookbook, someday... :)
 
Sagegreen
Sagegreen February 2, 2011
Love cloudberry and cardamom together! IKEA has a good lingonberry jam, too.
 
fiveandspice
fiveandspice February 2, 2011
Mmm, yes, lingonberry is also lovely!