Kladdkaka (Swedish sticky chocolate cake)

A year ago I had a birthday cake festooned with little Danish flags. This year, I find myself in Copenhagen for my birthday. Just. Fresh off the plane, I'm still grappling with jet lag. Waking up at 3.30am has its advantages though in that you are somewhat justified in eating two breakfasts. The first - toast made with bread from the tiny yet amazing bakery in the street in which I'm staying, smeared with butter and boysenberry jam - I ate illuminated by the glow of my laptop before the sun got up. The second I ate several hours later at Grød, a café more or less opposite the bakery, that serves only porridge... albeit porridge embellished with homemade dulche de leche, roasted almonds and chopped apple. Good food is not hard to find in Scandinavia. Not on my street. And not in my little apartment either, which has a beautiful kitchen overlooking trees in bud just about to blossom. 

The best way to feel at home in a new place is to cook. There are so many things I've marvelled at in these first few days - the unfamiliar sounds of children's chatter in the stairwell, the shoals of fast-moving cyclists in the streets, the fact that everyone here is ridiculously tall and good-looking - but nothing's given me more pleasure than roaming the aisles of a supermarket, selecting groceries, and bringing them home to bake a cake. Though I'm in Denmark, Copenhagen is in spitting distance of Sweden, so this particular recipe seemed appropriate for the location and occasion. Besides, I couldn't resist the name. In original language or in translation. The cake itself lives up to it. Dark, gooey, magnificent. A lovely way to land.

Kladdkaka (Swedish sticky chocolate cake)
Adapted from a recipe by Kari Diehl

You can make this as one large cake, as per the instructions below, or bake smaller individual cakes in a muffin tin or similar and halve the cooking time. I'd never thought to put blueberries with chocolate before, but it turns out they're amazing together.

2 eggs 
1 1/3 cups sugar
1/2 cup white flour (or wholemeal, if you can't read Danish and bought that by mistake)
1/8 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup melted butter
4 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa
1 tablespoon vanilla sugar or 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

 

Preheat oven to 350º. Lightly butter a round 8” or 9” springform or cake pan.

Whisk together the eggs and sugar. Gradually mix in the flour and salt. Stir cocoa and vanilla sugar or vanilla extract into melted butter until well-combined. Add cocoa/butter mixture to batter, stirring well until any lumps are removed. 

Pour batter into prepared pan. Cook for 25 minutes. Check for doneness; the edges of the cake should be crisp but the center still moist and sticky. A good test is to insert a toothpick first into the cake’s edge: it should come out clean. Then, insert it into the center of the cake. It should come out smeared with gooey, melting chocolate. 

Let rest in tin 10 minutes then turn out onto wire rack to cool completely. Dust with icing sugar or garnish with berries or dollop liberally with cream.