Swedish Visiting Cake

Looking forward.

I found a small obsession. A cake with the delicate flavors of almond and vanilla, a cake that is gentle and quiet, no fuss with frostings or complicated layers. I have fallen into the rabbit hole of reading recipes and studying the variations that are found from one baker’s hand to the next baker’s eye. This will be my spring cake.

A Swedish visiting cake made in a cast iron pan and another in a square baking dish. Mostly the recipe is a flour, sugar, butter and egg mixture with almond and vanilla extracts mixed in. The simplicity of this cake means no extra mixing apparatus are needed. This is a cake that forms a batter in ten minutes once you’ve gathered ingredients.

I made a version of it unknowingly called almond butter cake. It was a Swedish visiting cake in disguise. I swapped out the sugar for maple syrup and when I ate a bite I imagined a cake in France that was like custard, so soft and gooey from the syrup. When you substitute maple syrup for sugar you need to reduce the liquids in the recipe by 1/4 cup. I have not mastered this yet.

The flour we use in this house is called Einkorn, it is the oldest wheat known to us and is unaltered, no hybridization and it is considered gluten friendly for those of us who cannot eat the wheat grown in the United States or places where glyphosate is used. You can swap it out for regular flour on a one to one ratio when there is no yeast involved.

Our eggs from the eight birds that have decided to gift us again after a long dark winter that was eggless (chicken lay with the sunlight and we do not put lighting in their coop). Butter is always Kerygold, no compromise unless I might make it myself. Sliced almonds come from Trader Joe’s and we have a few bottles of extracts kept for such cake occasions. I would like to try the cake with sugar, but the dark sappy coconut sugar we use will change the consistency and the flavor (as well as the color) and I may need to make this once without too many variations so I know the end result. Then I will play.

Tomorrow I will lay out the supplies on my marble counters and begin the exploration of another recipe until the batter I mix becomes my own and I weave a spell in my kitchen that smells of vanilla beans and lemon scented almonds.

I will remember to take a photo and visit back to share the discoveries of the batter and the pans. We all need a cake we can throw together in minutes and serve with some fresh whipped cream and a mug of coffee. A cake for visitors, reminding us that our homes are place for gatherings and laughs among the day to day chores of washing up and tidying, alarm clocks and showers.

Thank you for all the beautiful comments you are leaving this week. I will sweep in and respond, I just wanted to tell you that they mean the world to me. I would like to make you cake.