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.