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Thursday, February 10, 2011

The Butterscotch Cream cake--Kinuskikakku



Cakes in Finland are incredible.  None of the super-sweet icing made of questionable ingredients like in the U.S., Finnish bakers use real cream and fruit to decorate their delicious cakes.  My kids made this cake with a little help.  It has homemade butterscotch topping, crushed pineapple filling, and fresh whipped cream.

Finnish cakes start with a rather dry cake.  There is no fat in the cake base, except for the egg yolks.  The dry cake base is baked in one pan and then sliced horizontally to make layers.  Each layer is then moistened with fruit juice before a fruit or cream filling is added.  This creates a much different texture than in cakes from the U.S.  I've sometimes baked the layers in separate pans, but it really moistens best if the cake is baked as one piece and then cut.

The cake we made is a combination of several recipes from both cookbooks and the internet.  We started by mixing the dry cake base ingredients:  2/3 cup flour, 2/3 cup potato or corn starch, and 1 Tablespoon of baking powder.


Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit (175 C) and prepare a large cake pan, either by buttering and flouring it, or we like to use Crisco spray with flour.  Don't use regular cooking spray, or the cake will stick.


Beat 3 eggs and 1 1/3 cups of sugar until they are light yellow and frothy, like this:


Next, fold in the dry ingredients:


Put the mixture into the prepared pan and bake for about 35 minutes in the bottom half of the oven.


After the cake cools, cut it in half.  On the cut side of the top half of the cake, we put the juice drained off of a can of crushed pineapple.  On the bottom half, we drizzled about 1/3 cup of orange juice.


We put 1 cup of heavy cream in a saucepan, and added 1/3 cup packed brown sugar and 1/3 cup sugar.  Let this come to a boil over medium heat and cook to soft ball stage (about 235 F if you are using a thermometer, otherwise put a drop in a glass of water and see if it makes a ball).  Stir constantly!!


 We poured the butterscotch over the cake and let it harden a bit before the kids decorated it with fresh whipped cream (sweetened with just a bit of powdered sugar) and LOTS of fresh strawberries.




The whole family agreed that this was the best cake we had ever eaten!

5 comments:

  1. You do such a wonderful job with this blog! I love the look of this cake, but sadly it's not something I could make for us (it is definitely not diabetic friendly). Maybe I'll get a slice at your house sometime. ;-)

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  2. We would be glad to make you one, Teresa! I don't think there is any way to alter this one to make it diabetic friendly, wish there were!

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  3. I LOVE how you post pics at each stage. I am a great believer in comparing to see if what I'm doing looks like what you're doing. lol Not that mine does, but at least I know how it's SUPPOSED to look.

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  4. Thanks Darla! I like photos of what I'm making, too. It just makes it that much easier to follow along.

    One of my goals with this blog is to make a collection of recipes for my kids so that they will be able to look back at it and make their favorites. I have the most wonderful baking book, but it is completely in Finnish, and I want the kids to be able to use the recipes, too.

    I'll be putting up more baking recipes, next Tuesday is fat Tuesday, and there are some very delicious sweet rolls with almond paste and whipped cream that we make every year.

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  5. Hi Elizabeth,

    Found your post by googling "kinuskikakku"; I wanted to make this for my friend because she says she misses the butterscotch cake they served at Fazer Cafe in Helsinki. Have you been there? If so, how does this cake compare to theirs?

    Thanks for sharing this recipe, I can't tell you how glad I am to have found it!! :D

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