Swedish Sweet Treats - Gorgeously Gooey Kladdkaka!

 This was an article originally published in The Oxford Blue in January 2021. The original of this article can be found here.

Image description: A slice of kladdkaka topped with whipped cream and icing sugar. Yum!

I will confess straight away – my mum and I aren’t Swedes. Nonetheless, over the course of our numerous trips to Stockholm we’ve fallen in love with Scandinavian cooking as a whole, especially their sweet treats. One of those in particular is kladdkaka – a gorgeous, rich, lava-like chocolate brownie cake that’s utter heaven to eat after a long day of exploring the city. The cake certainly lives up to its name – “kladdig” in Swedish means “sticky” or “messy,” and this certainly can be the case because of its gooeyness!

Although the origin of the cake is uncertain, it’s rumoured to have started life as a modification on the normal chocolate cake recipe during World War II. The Swedes were officially neutral throughout the war, but they still experienced shortages for certain items and could not get hold of baking soda needed for traditional baking. The result? This dense, molten lava cake was born. Evidently, the cake soon became so popular throughout the country that it was even designated its own designated day of celebration: November the 7th. As Wednesday was International Chocolate Cake Day, it felt like the perfect day to revisit not just my favourite bake, but also a very quick and simple recipe. You don’t have to be the next Mary Berry to have a go at this one!

Ingredients:

The measurements here are for a cake that would serve five, although this depends on the shape and size of the cake tin you're using. I love to make this cake in a square tin, and using these sorts of measurements it makes for the perfect small but square treat!

150g butter

100g good quality milk chocolate or dark chocolate, if you prefer darker flavours.

200g caster sugar

2 eggs

40g cocoa powder

125g plain flour

1tsp vanilla sugar

A pinch of sea salt... or two

Prep time: 10 minutes

Cook time: 16 minutes

Total time: 26-30 minutes

How to bake:

Initially, you need to start by turning on the oven to warm at 180C, 200C if you're not using a fan-assisted oven. Then, fill a saucepan half-full of hot water and warm it over a low heat - once it gets close to the boil, place a glass bowl over the top. Into this bowl, you should add the chocolate; I know it can be tempting to have a nibble at this point in time, but the more chocolate that goes into the cake the better it will be!

Once the chocolate has started to melt, add all of the butter into the bowl to melt it down. Make sure to keep an eye on it and keep stirring – the end result should be a very smooth, creamy mixture. Once this is done, set the mixture aside to cool.

Now it’s time to move on to the main ingredients. In a stand mixer, whisk the eggs and sugar together until they’re pale and fluffy. It’s still possible to do this if you don’t have a stand mixer, it’ll just be a wee bit more of an arm workout – I always favour legs over arms when I'm at the gym, so . Once these have been mixed together, mix the dry ingredients into the egg and sugar mixture, then fold in the butter and chocolate mixture in with everything else. (Feel free to make your batter smile here, just as wide as you’ll be soon!)

Once the mixture is smooth (it’s not half as good when it’s lumpy!), use a spatula to scrape it out into a baking tin and place in the over for 14-15 minutes to start. Make sure to either line the baking tin with baking paper or grease the tin lightly with butter to prevent the bottom from sticking. It’s at this point in time that, if you’ve been a little careless with efficiently scraping the bowl, you have the opportunity to snaffle up any leftover cake mix. This is definitely one of my favourite parts of baking that I’ve enjoyed since childhood, so I personally would go for it!

We now have a brief interlude in the cooking procedure. Maybe make yourself a cup of tea, do the daily crossword, or scroll through Twitter for a bit. Whatever floats your boat.

Now, the next bit is where a certain element of guesswork comes in. The cooking time does vary depending on a number of factors – when baking it for this article, we took it out after 15 minutes to check the consistency before putting it back again for another ten minutes to make sure the centre was a little firmer. You don’t want the cake to be too runny in the centre, but instead a firm, gooey consistency. A good test for this is to take a toothpick and test the edge of the cake – if it comes out clear about 2 cm in and the cake does not look too runny in the middle, then it should be ready to take out. If you feel it needs a bit more, simply leave it to cool in the tin, but if you feel it may have had 30 seconds too long, remove from the tin immediately to stop the baking process. Once you’ve managed to work this out, you’ll then know for definite the best time to bake it going forward.

Once your kladdkaka is out of the oven, leave it to cool for a minute before cutting it into slices and serving. Personally, I love having the cake while its still warm, covered in a little sprinkling of icing sugar and with a generous serving of vanilla ice cream that provides an amazing hot-cold contrast when eaten together. Gooey, warm, and mouth-watering: it’s like receiving a little squidgy Scandi hug on a cold winter evening.

If you would like to try baking the above cake but need a vegan alternative, then the attached link provides recommended ingredients and substitutes to do just that. While I’ve heard that this is a good alternative recipe, I haven’t baked it myself – so I can’t comment on how it would turn out! Happy baking!