Kladdkaka - The famous Swedish chocolate cake

We arrived at the next stop of our series about Swedish desserts, the kladdkaka.

The Swedes has many national day around the year when they celebrate the day one of their national desserts such as kanelbullens dag (the Swedish cinnamon rolls) on 4th October or Fettisdagen (the Fat Tuesday) when the whole Swedish nation eats semla or like today, on 7th November when everyone bakes kladdkaka at home. 

The word "kladdkaka" means sticky cake. This cake is the first dessert what the Swedish children learn to bake from their parents. It's similar to the American brownie but the kladdkaka's middle is more soft and sticky because of the chocolate. Generally it's served with whipped cream or vanilla ice cream. 

You can find kladdkaka in almost every café and restaurant all around Sweden, somewhere it's good, somewhere it's better but unfortunately you can meet with less good one also, whose middle is not soft - which is essential for kladdkaka. In addition like every other Swedish cake, the kladdkaka has also frozen version as well therefore who is too lazy to bake, they can also buy a quite delicious cake in the supermarket. Since it's as quick as lightning to prepare and doesn't need any special qualification or practise, it's hard to find an excuse why you couldn't bake it at home.

Like every dessert, million different kinds of kladdkaka exist but all consist butter, cocoa powder, flour, egg but with different rate. Moreover, kladdkaka has improved variant as well, which is added vanilla or chocolate in, but the result is always very similar.  

From the million versions I chose the famous kladdkaka of Leila Lindholm from her book, A Piece of Cake.

Ingredients:

50 g butter
1/2 dl oil
2 egg
2 dl castor sugar
1 dl brown sugar
2,5 dl flour
4 tablespoon good quality cocoa powder (I use only Holland!)
2 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon vanilla sugar
1 pinch of salt

butter and flour to grease the form
50 g dark chocolate (min. 70%)

1. Preheat the oven to 150°C.

2. Melt the butter in the microwave oven or in a small sauce pan then add the oil. 

3. In a big bowl whisk the eggs and the castor and brown sugar with a hand mixer till foamy then addmix the oily butter. 

4. In another bowl mix the dry ingredients, the flour, baking powder, salt, vanilla sugar and cocoa powder and stir into the egg mixture. 

5. When it's ready pour in the prepared, buttered and floured about 24 cm round cake pan with removable bottom and sprinkle with some breaken chocolate pieces. 

5. In the middle of the oven bake the cake for 25 minutes. When you will stick a knife in it, don't surprise, it'll be sticky a bit because of the melted chocolate on its top. 

Serve with freshly whipped cream.