Did you know that there is a tradition in Sweden that you bring your own cake on your birthday to your friends\colleagues? That’s new (and also a little strange) to me, since in my culture it is vice versa – generally people get YOU a birthday cake!
It is not an actual must. But if you don’t bring one, chances are that you won’t get any cake from others 🙂 So it is either no cake or the cake you bring! But don’t get upset! Probably you will have a fika to celebrate your birthday even without a cake 😉
Princesstårta reminds me of the birthdays and celebrations of my childhood. Today, I will share the recipe and how to bake it – and let me tell you – this one passed Swedish tasters test and got comments like it tastes better than most of the cakes you buy.
Let me know in the comments what your experience is with Swedish birthdays and recipes! And maybe you want to share some pictures of your recipes too?
The truth is Swedish recipes can be tricky. You can find many different recipes and there is not much consistency among them. So if you want to cook a Swedish recipe – check multiple recipes, get the main idea and then cook it as you wish. Don’t overthink the details 🙂
One more thing before the recipe: there is a question that’s kept my mind busy for some time now. Why do most Swedish recipes use dl as measurement even for flour or sugar? For me dl is a measurement for fluids. Recently I had an enlightenment and I think I now know the answer! dl measurement indicates the measurement spoons. So when they say dl, just use a measuring spoon. Fluid or not you will measure the right amount. Some might think this is totally obvious but for me it was a real mystery 🙂
Recipe for princesstårta
Here is the recipe. As main source, I used this recipe with some differences in the method.
For the cake:
- 200 g of eggs
- 110 g of sugar
- 120 g of flour
- 50 g butter, melted
Beat the eggs, add sugar and whisk until it gets a little fluffy. Add the flour slowly while you keep whisking. Finally add the butter and mix it all together. Put the mix in a 20 cm diameter cake mold and bake for 25-30 min at 180 degrees. Every oven is different so check the cake occasionally to be sure it doesn’t burn.
You can just bake one cake and cut it into two to put the cream inside. However, since we didn’t put any baking powder to make the cake fluffy, the layers might be too thin but it is still ok. Yet, I personally prefer to bake two of them to make the cake look bigger.
Vanilla Cream:
- 500 g of milk
- 2 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 120 g of egg yolks
- 125 g of sugar
- 40 g corn starch
- 50 g butter
Boil the milk, half of the sugar and vanilla extract. Remove from the stove and let it rest for 5 minutes while you occasionally keep stirring.
Beat the eggs, add the other half of the sugar and corn starch – mix well. Then add to the milk mixture and boil again until it gets creamy and thick.
Remove from the heat, add the butter and keep stirring. Now you should have a proper, thick vanilla cream.
If something is wrong, try to add either more milk or some flour.
Other ingredients:
- 1000 g whipping cream
- 300 g of raspberries, blueberries and strawberries (I prefer fresh but frozen also work)
- 500 g marzipan
- Icing sugar
Put whipping cream in a bowl and mix with a mixer until it gets fluffy and thick.
Cut your cake into three pieces. Inside the first layer, put the vanilla cream outer edges. Then put lots of fruit inside the circle. And mix the remaining vanilla cream with one or two full spoon of whipping cream and put it on top of the fruits. So in the first layer, there should be vanilla cream, fruit and whipping cream.
On the second layer, there is just the whipping cream. But you can also put fruits or vanilla cream also if you want – it’s your birthday cake after all 🙂
And on the last layer, we put the remaining whipping cream all over the cake including the sides and cover all the visible sides of the cake with cream.
Now we need to cover our cake with marzipan (that green thing that makes a princesstårta a princesstårta!)
I prefer ready-to-use marzipan because it is a lot more convenient to roll out (rolling out marzipan properly requires a good amount of strength and effort and sometimes I prefer to take the easy way) But there are also marzipans which you can buy and roll out yourself at home.
Cover the cake with marzipan and try to make it look as smooth as possible (it is really hard for me to make it look good) And you can sprinkle icing sugar on it or put some edible ornaments.
And that’s how you can put a lot effort to bake a cake while you’re preparing for your birthday! Still, it is fun to do if you’re into baking like me 🙂
Written by Busra Zenging
Hej! I am a Newbie who is close to become an Oldbie in Sweden! I’ve been in Stockholm nearly for six months, I already did so many “fika”, swam in cold waters of Sweden, walked barefoot in Stockholm’s parks during the summer and, of course, had too many interactions with the Swedish bureaucracy 🙂 So far so good! My next challenge is job hunting – we’ll see how this will go 😉
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