Friday, June 22, 2012

Happy Father's Day!!

I did it!  I redeemed myself!!  And it feels good.  The hubs is from Sweden and once a year on his birthday, he wants his favorite traditional Swedish cake.  Now if you know any Swedes, you might also know that they don't really care for too much sugar.
They consider "American" cakes to be a little on the too sweet side (not me, give me the piece with the rose on top or the corner with all the piping on the side).  
So what you might ask what is a traditional Swedish cake?  Well, it is basically a yellow cake filled with smashed up fruit - my husband's favorite is mashed up bananas with lightly pureed strawberries between the layers.  So once a year, I attempt to make his favorite cake.  When we were first married, he had told me the cake was similar to an Angel Food cake.  So every year I would go to the store and buy the already made Angel Food Cake cut it into three layers, fill it with the fruit, cover it in cool whip and more strawberries and I was done.  But then over time, I learned that it really isn't like Angel Food cake at all.

Well this year, I decided for his birthday I was going to make the cake from scratch.  I have the Sugar Cake recipe that his mother gave me a few years back so I thought I would surprise him with the real thing.  So, I prepared the batter, split it between two cake pans and baked two layers for the cake thinking I would be able to split the layers.  But when they came out of the oven, I thought to myself that they were already too thin and that I should have doubled the recipe.  So instead of splitting the thin layers, I made another batch.  More cake can't be bad can it?  Oh yes, sometimes it can.  Even though the layers looked thin, they were too thick for this cake. I learned the hard way that the layers need to be relatively thin for this cake to absorb the moisture from the filling and make the cake super moist.



Unfortunately, I learned that lesson a little too late.  His birthday cake, although beautiful with the red strawberries and real whipped cream, was dry inside and generally a huge disappointment.  Can you imagine having to wait a whole year for your favorite cake only to be completely and utterly disappointed?  I tasted it too, it wasn't good.  What's a girl going to do?  Well giving up is not one of them.

So I figured I needed to attempt to redeem myself. And Father's Day was the perfect opportunity for the land of redemption.  I decided I wanted to make the cake look like a Swedish flag.  Because I planned to use fondant, I'm already compromising the authenticity of the traditional Swedish Cake but I decided it was an acceptable trade-off to have the flag.  But it didn't matter...it was a success.  (I had strategically given the hubs a piece from the middle of the cake so he wouldn't get all of the buttercream and fondant from the side of the cake).  

I cut the cake into three layers and filled it with as much filing and fruit as I could and still keep the cake from becoming unstable.  After sitting overnight in the fridge, the cake was absolutely perfect.  We ended up taking it with us to a lake party we had with other Swedes on Father's Day and not only did my husband love it, others there loved it too.  One individual told me I should open a bakery that served Swedish pastries.  That might be going a bit far.  I was thrilled just with the fact that the hubby loved it.  How do I know you ask?  He asked me to make it again for a Swedish midsommar gathering we are having this Sunday.  Score!!!

Here is a look at the cake.  The writing on the top isn't so great and I need to attempt to improve my photography skills.  Since I'll be making another for the Swedish Midsommar party I'll post pictures and the recipe.


 I sure hope Pappa knows he is loved! 

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