Cardamom Cake

Sometimes I get into a funk and all I want to do is bake. I never eat all these baked goods; like Winnie the Pooh, I just want to taste them. I went through one such funk two Saturdays ago and wound up with a plethora of absolutely incredible treats, half of which I froze, half of the rest of which I gave away, and the remaining quarter has been perishing on our kitchen counter ever since. This cake has not perished. A sizable portion of this cake was devoured in under an hour.

I admit maybe I overdid things a little, but hear me out: One of the last things I made was from a cookbook I’d been itching to try, and I knew with each passing week I would grow more and more unlikely to be able to bake the day away. The cake turned out so well that I immediately moved onto another recipe from the book. Like, as soon as I tasted this, I started another something else, which was equally as good but you've got to draw the line somewhere.

The cookbook is Swedish Cakes and Cookies, and is already one of my favorites—it hasn’t even gone so long between uses as to find a permanent home in the cookbook bookcase—and I received it in a lovely package from the lovely Katie. Katie writes about food and nutrition over at The Muffin Myth and, in addition to being one of my absolute favorite people online, to me she is the New York Times of nutrition—if she says it, it’s so.

I knew after poring through the book that this would be one of my first pursuits—I love cardamom and think it’s not featured in nearly enough sweets—and ohmygosh that was so the right call. This cake is perfect—it has the perfect amount of sweetness, a perfect moist crumb, and is perfectly simple and straightforward. I bet you have all the ingredients on hand already.

We ate ours hot out of the oven, and then with strawberries the next morning for an indulgent breakfast. I’ve frozen half the cake—it makes more than you’d think—and will be able to thaw and enjoy it with some of the many guests we anticipate in the coming weeks, or just shamelessly hog the whole thing ourselves. Regardless, I will definitely be making this again. Thanks, Katie!

Cardamom Cake
From Swedish Cakes and Cookies


I am listing the ingredients as they are listed in the book, which is to say I'm listing cups-and-spoons and metric weights.  One day I will join the rest of the world in the metric system, but probably not before I make this cake again.

Ingredients:

• 1 cup/200g butter
• 2 eggs
• 1 1/4 cups/3dl sugar
• 3 1/3 cup/8dl AP flour
• 1 Tablespoon baking powder
• 2 1/2 teaspoons ground cardamom
• 1 1/4 cups/3dl milk
• 3 - 4 Tablespoons pearl sugar (optional but really worth it)
• coarsely chopped almonds - I used blanched, slivered

Instructions:

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F/175 Celsius.  
2. Grease and flour a 9x13" pan, or a 10" round cake pan.  Swedish Cakes recommends the 10" round cake pan, but I deemed there to be too much batter for that so I went with the 9x13" pan.  I'm glad I did; I got nice, thick cake and lots of it.
3. Melt the butter and allow it to cool.
4. Beat eggs and sugar until yellow and very thick.
5. Add flour, baking powder, cardamom, milk, and melted butter, mixing until just combined.
6. Pour into the prepared pan and sprinkle the pearl sugar and almonds on top.
7. Bake for about 35 minutes (9x13" pan) or around an hour (10" round pan).
8. Cool completely (yeah, right).