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
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Ingredients
- Cardamom cake
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1/2 cup
unsalted butter
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3
large eggs, at room temperature
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3/4 cup
white sugar
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1 teaspoon
vanilla extract
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1 cup
flour
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1/4 teaspoon
salt
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2 teaspoons
freshly ground cardamom
-
1 teaspoon
baking powder
- Cloudberry cream
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1 1/2 cups
heavy whipping cream
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1/3 cup
cloudberry preserves or cloudberry jam
Directions
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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.
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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).
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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!).
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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.
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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.
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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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