Swedish Summer Cake

She wiped the cream from the spatula, smearing it luxuriously on the sponge, and languorously placed the strawberries onto the vanilla-flavoured confection.Viewed from above, it would be all innocent, all strawberries and cream, but she knew that in truth, this only concealed something altogether more grown up, a custard that tasted like ambrosia but paved the way to darker, more dangerous places, oozing over the fruit, this time sprinkled in sugar so that juices had started to run. Would he be tempted? Could she take him to a place he had never been before. She knew he was watching her. She smoothed down her apron and ran her fingers through her hair. As if in anticipation of what was to come, she moved more slowly. She turned to reveal what she knew he was waiting for - had been waiting for - for so long...

"It's ready, darling" she murmured huskily....

To me, this is cake porn at its finest. The Goddess tries to dress it up as a wholesome and homely summer treat, but it's from Scandanavia, and it's nothing of the sort. True, we had it for pudding on Sunday lunchtime, but it could just as well grace the dessert table of some more decadent feast.

This cake has been whispering to me ever since I got my hands on Kitchen. Every time I looked at the book, I could hear it. Baaaaake me! Eeeeeeeat me! Every time I got the book down from the shelf, it somehow ended up open on that page. This happens to me alot.

I couldn't bear it any longer, and having won the delicious Forman and Field box of goodies last week, I knew that if we were having a celebration meal, this would have to be the pudding.

It’s called Swedish Summer Cake.


I can’t find the recipe on line, so I can’t put a link in. To be honest, even if you didn’t go a bundle on the family food sections (I do - you can't beat her recipes), it would be worth buying Kitchen just for this cake. (She’s not paying me, by the way).

It’s 3 layers of light sponge  sandwiched to gether with a custard cream and strawberries and topped with whipped cream and more fruit.

I think ‘whisked sponge’ might be the technical term for the cake – there is no fat (yes, girls, this could be a slimming aid...or maybe not) in the sponge mixture. You whisk the eggs and sugar together to be a light, moussey texture then add in some hot water as you carry on whisking - I did all this in my trusty Kenwood. Finally, you whisk in flour and baking powder and bake for half an hour or so.

a bit wonky, but hey - did it matter?

There’s proper custard involved:

I know I have eulogised about the properties of Birds Custard before, but I felt that there was no adulterating this recipe. I had to follow it down the line. It was fairly quick and easy to be honest. It did end up a little runny, and a quick consultation of Nigella.com after the event, suggests that I didn’t leave it to thicken up for quite long enough, but to be honest, I’m, not complaining.

You have to split the sponge into 3 discs. I love the way Nigella instructs you to “courageously, slice the cake horizontally into 3 layers...” I sliced courageously and made a bit of a pigs ear of it to be honest. However, I was heartened by her earlier words of encouragement “...any clumsiness is either easily concealed or adds to the homespun charm of it all...” There you see – it was fine that my top layer looked like this after cutting.

To sandwich together you whisk a huge amount of cream with some vanilla extract, and then fold a third of the cream into your custard. You macerate strawberries with some caster sugar, and layer sponge, the custard cream and fruit up, then top with the rest of the vanilla cream and strawbs.

Did you want a reminder of what it looked like?

It is divine.

I'm linking up with Forever Nigella again. The July event is hosted by Amy at Cooking, Cakes andChildren for Sarah from Maison Cupcake

The theme is 'sizzling summer' . If I had to justify the entry of this cake in that category, it is Swedish Summer Cake. Then I can attest to the fact that we ate it for lunch  al fresco on Sunday, hot on the heals of a lovely chicken chasseur.  With a lovely glass of chilled white wine. And if you were focussing on the 'sizzle' part of the category, well, returning to my earlier theme, despite it's innocent looks, I do believe that this is a 'hot' cake...