Kransekake - Traditional Norwegian Cake

Kransekake is made of rings of chewy and delicious almond cookies.Norwegians bake these fir-tree-shape cakes on big occasions, for example Christmas or weddings. But when I got Kransekake pans as a present I could not wait till Christmas. I had to bake them now!

Yes, you will need special pans to make this wonderful treat. Last time I checked they were available on Lakeland.co.uk and Amazon.com (or your country's Amazon). They look like this:

And now let's get started. The recipe which I am using here was printed on the Kransekake pans packaging.

Kransekake - Traditional Norwegian Cake

Recipe

Dough:
450g of icing sugar (also known as confectioner's sugar)
500g of ground almonds
4 egg whites
1 tsp of baking powder

Icing:
150g of icing sugar
1 egg white
1 tsp of lemon juice

Slightly beat egg whites with a fork till foamy. Like this:

Mix icing sugar with ground almonds and baking powder. Add to egg whites and mix. The dough will be quite stiff, somewhat resembling pasta dough. While you are preparing the dough, boil water in a large saucepan. Put the bowl with the dough over your bain-marie and warm the dough till 40C (this is slightly warmer than your body temperature). You will need to stir the dough constantly to make sure it's warming up evenly. That's how it will look like:

Once the dough is warm remove it from the heat, cool to room temperature and put it in the fridge overnight. Next morning pinch pieces from the dough and roll them into long strips of about 1cm thick. Put these strips into your Kransekake pans. You don't need to oil pans.

Then bake at 200C for about 15-20 minutes till golden. You'll know your cookies are ready if they easily pop out of the pan. If they stick to the bottom or break when you try to remove them from the pan put them back in the oven for a few more minutes. Cool the baked rings on the rack.

Now let's have fun: assemble our cake and decorate it. Mix all the ingredients for the icing till it looks like a mildly thick paste. If it's too runny add more icing sugar. If it's too thick add a bit more lemon juice. Put the icing into a zip-lock bag and cut a very small hole (about 1-1.5mm). Arrange all your rings in order from the biggest to the smallest. Take your largest ring and put it on your serving plate. Apply icing in U-pattern along the ring. Put the second ring on top, sticking it to the previous ring. Like this:

Continue to the very top. You can decorate your Kransekake with M&Ms, sugar snowflakes or sugar flowers - apply them while icing is still wet. Then let the icing dry - and enjoy!

Happy baking!!