Late August in Norway, and the plums are in season. So are apple cakes: we have had several this week while visiting relatives for coffee. Endless cups of filter coffee, with freshly baked apple cake. All slighly different, but delicious. Tart apple slices in a light cake base, scented with cinnamon – just wonderful. Today we needed a simple cake, and yes: it was an apple cake. It is the birthday of my mother, so various more elaborate cakes have also been baked, but this was the extra cake for any neighbours who might stop by. Norwegian birthday celebrations often have several cakes.
A tray of klink egg: slightly damaged eggs, or small ones. Our neighbour has hens, and we were over there for coffee Wednesday. On the way home, they handed us a tray of eggs – knowing we were celebrating today, and would be baking a lot. Perfectly good for baking, if you recalculate the egg size. An average egg in Norwegian recipes is 60g.
Here is the recipe I was requested to bake. I can easily see which cakes my mother likes, as she annotates them and also includes calculations for baking the cake in large and small baking forms. As you can see, this is adapted from a Swedish apple cake competition winner, and is very good. Some measurements are given in dl, desilitre: it is a volume measurement, one desilitre is 100 millitres.
Mikael’s apple cake
2 medium eggs
250 ml white granulated sugar. (1.05 US cups)
150 grammes butter (we used margarine)
300 ml plain white flour (1.26 US cups)
1.5 tsp baking powder
2 apples
After baking: 1 tsp cinnamon
Whisk eggs and sugar to a light airy mass. Melt butter, cool. Measure flour and baking powder, add that to eggs. Add cooled butter. Whisk slightly. Peel and core apples, slice into boats. Pour batter into prepared 26 cm springform (baking parchment on base, a little butter to grease sides) and press the apple boats in.
Bake 45-50 min or so at 175C until nicely golden. Cool. When ready to serve, dust with cinnamon. Filter coffee on the side is optional.
There you are, a proper Swedish apple cake, slightly adapted from the original. Best the day it is baked, so I will bring this to Fiesta Friday as a rustic Scandinavian taste of summer. Enjoy!
PS for those who enjoy radio, this is really funny: The Cold Swedish Winter, on BBC Radio 4. It is a sitcom about a British comedian who moves to Sweden.
krumkaker 
Gorgeous!! My in-laws are visiting next weekend & I was going to make your pear & ricotta cake…. now I may have to make this too! 🙂
Thanks so much! What a compliment! This one might be more fail-safe, it is a low but very tasty cake. Easy to scale up or down too, if you can read the annotations.
I love the photo of the recipe! Today I just saw (and bought) the season’s first honey crisp apples . . . maybe a cake is in our future!
Perfect timing! Isn’t lovely when the new apples arrive? We forgot to dust the cinnamon over before serving the cake, and it was still very nice.
Lovely!
Love your apple cake. How nice too to get a supply of fresh eggs to help out in your baking.
Thanks! Yes, the eggs were lovely and fresh, they whisked up beautifully. The neighbour has young hens, so the eggs were small but very nice, even these damaged ones.
Yum yum:-)
So glad you liked it!
I will have to try this – apple cake (and banana bread) are the favorites in our home. And a note about cakes, I had mentioned to my husband about the custom of always offering coffee and cake to visiting folk and he just about burst out of his skin out of excitement! He said that in some books he had read (I believe Camilla Läckberg but possibly some other northern european author) he took note of the many times that cake entered the picture. I suppose for an italian it is a strange thing, but we both agree that it is a wonderful gesture.
Excellent! How funny! Those are great books. Nothing like a good gloomy Scandi crime novel! Yes, lots of coffee and cake on offer in Swedish crime novels too, so true! It is part of being a good host, nothing necessarily fancy but homebaked is preferable. Here in the country we are miles from any bakery, but with eggs from next door and apples from the garden, a cake is easy enough. Quite a different cake culture from Italy, though. Tell your husband we are having homemade tiramisu for dessert, though (special request from my mother.)
This looks so yummy – I love apple cake so much!
So happy you liked it!
oh wow birthday wishes to your mom and such a delectable cake on a special occasion….have a fab week end…Happy FF…
Thanks so much! It was a very nice birthday party for her. Happy FF too, and thanks for sharing all those wonderful recipes. I am looking forward to trying some when back in Rome next week.
Beautiful cake! 🙂
Oh yum! this looks really tasty! Love apple cake 🙂
So glad you liked it!