Vanille kaka

Historical vanilla cake

This cake recipe comes from an old Icelandic cookbook from 1858 - so people have been eating the cake for at least 165 years in Iceland - a very historical cake! (That's why it's still called "vanille kaka", even if it would be more of a "vanillukaka" in today's Icelandic.) 

In addition, it's a strikingly simple recipe, with ingredients you can always have in stock: in-house - eggs, sugar, flour and a bit of vanilla for taste. 

According to the cookbook, the recipe should yield 10 servings - for this you should use a pound of sugar, a pound of flour and actually 20 eggs and then bake the dough as a sheet cake. Somehow that was too much for me - so I only prepared half the dough here and baked the cake in a smaller baking pan (about 15 x 10 inches resp. 40 x 25 cm). The six of us ate it with coffee – only a little bit is left over.

By the way, all six sample eaters unanimously recommend serving the cake with whipped cream and maybe some fresh fruit.  

Ingredients

10 eggs

250 g white sugar

120 g potato flour

120 g wheat flour

1 tsp ground vanilla 

Preparation

Preheat the oven to 350 °F (180 °C) upper/lower heat. 

Separate the eggs. 

In a large bowl, beat the yolks with the sugar thoroughly until frothy. 

Add the potato flour, wheat flour and ground vanilla and mix well.

Beat the egg whites in a high mixing cup until stiff and fold under the dough. 

Then place the dough in a box tin greased or lined with baking paper (approx. 15 x 10 inches resp. 40 x 25 cm).

Bake in a preheated oven at 350 °F (180 °C) upper and lower heat for about 35 minutes until the top has turned golden brown. Toothpick test!

Then serve the cake with fresh whipped cream.

Blómkálssúpa

Cauliflower soup

Maybe, in the Lenting season you prefer something vegetarian. Then this soup might be interesting for you. 

Ingredients for 4 - 6 people

2 small heads of cauliflower

2 l water

120 g butter

4 Tbsp flour

2 egg yolks

250 ml whipping cream

2 tsp vegetable broth powder

1 pinch of coarse sea salt

1 pinch of black pepper

Preparation 

Clean the cauliflower heads, wash and remove the stalk. 

Cook the cauliflower florets in water for about 30 minutes until everything is nice and soft.

Then drain the water, catch it (still needed for the soup!) and puree the cauliflower with a blender.

In a small saucepan, melt the butter and stir in the flour.

Add the cauliflower water in portions and stir until a nice consistency is achieved. (I used about 1 l of cauliflower water.) Season with a little vegetable broth powder, salt and pepper.

Put the egg yolks in a bowl and mix thoroughly with 50 ml whipping cream and 50 ml of the soup.

Add the soup, the egg yolk mixture and the remaining cream to the pot with the pureed cauliflower and mix over very low heat. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

Then serve the cauliflower soup with bread and butter, herb butter baguette or similar.