Kladdkaka

There's chocolate cake and there's chocolate cake - and then there's kladdkaka. I guess it's symptomatic of my level of proficiency in Swedish that until recently I though kladdkaka was simply an abbreviation from chokladkaka, meaning 'chocolate cake' (yes, I assumed wrongly that chocolate in Swedish was spelled chokladd with double 'd') - when in fact it simply means 'goo cake'. The name hints at the fact that when done right, the centre of the cake is in fact quite gooey - soft, viscous and not at all dry.

By now you might be thinking of a good moist brownie - which is essentially what kladdkaka is. Tradition dictates that it is round and that wedges are served with a dollop of whipped cream. This was how I first encountered it, in the cafés in Stockholm where it is one of the staple cakes along with the ubiquitous cinnamon rolls.

I'd been wanting to try my hand at it for a while when a friend directed my attention towards the winning recipe (in Swedish) from the 2009 Swedish championships in kladdkaka (!!) - which I proceed to describe below (with minor modifications). The spiced fudge included in this recipe is pure luxury - the kladdkaka without the fudge is perfectly delicious in it's own right - although I suspect the fudge was part of what set it apart to become the winning entry in the kladdkaka competition.

Ingredients:
- 2 eggs
- 340 g (12 oz) sugar
- 90 g (¹/₅ lb) flour
- 40 g (1.4 oz) powdered cocoa
- 1 tsp vanilla sugar
- ¹/₄ tsp salt
- 100 g (3.5 oz) unsalted butter, melted
fudge:
- 1.5 dL (²/₃ cup) cream
- 1 tsp honey
- 2 tsp powdered cinnamon
- 2 tsp powdered cardamom
- 200 g (7 oz) milk chocolate
to serve:
- whipped cream

The eggs and the sugar were whipped to a white foamy mass. Separately, the flour was mixed with cocoa, vanilla sugar and salt before stirring it into the sugar-egg mass. Lastly, melted butter was stirred in before pouring the batter into a greased and floured spring form (diameter ~ 22 cm / 8.5 inches). The cake was baked in the bottom of the oven at 175 C (350 F) for 20 minutes.


While the cake was cooling a bit, the fudge was prepared. This is where I deviated from the original recipe: as I don't have a mortar I used powdered cinnamon and cardamom rather than freshly (lightly) crushed cinnamon sticks and cardamom seeds. The original recipe brings the cream, honey and spices to a boil, then lets it stand for minutes to extract flavours from the spices before reheating, filtering off the bulk of the cinnamon sticks and cardamom seeds and mixing with the milk chocolate. Since I used powdered spices, there was no need for filtration, and thus no real reason to let the warm cream stand to extract flavours - I simply let the cream stand long enough to break the milk chocolate to bits before mixing.

The fudge was applied on top of the cake and the whole thing was cooled in the fridge for 1.5 hours before serving with freshly whipped cream - delicious perfection.

It's rather heavy, so I didn't have enough guests to finish it off right away. Leaving it in the fridge overnight, I found that the texture wasn't quite right the next day - at least not when coming straight out of the fridge. Also, I do think less fudge could suffice.