Tobbe II's Cake

Howdy, since Tobbe is coming by here tomorrow to pick me up and drive us to our New Year's Party in Stockholm, I decided to make a cake in his honor. Well, it's actually already invented and called Oscar II's Cake. You see, Oscar II was an old Swedish king under whose rule the union between Sweden and Norway collapsed in the early 20th century and left Sweden without any rights to ripe the benefits of the huge subsequent Norwegian oil exports. So, I guess he needed a cake to console himself after that defeat.


When making a cake, the first thing you need are a couple of cute assistants, in this case Hirvi (to the left) and Pixie (to the right) gave me a hand. As you can see, they are very interested in the fine art of baking cakes.


You don't really need a lot of ingredients for this recipe, and fortunately for you slim freaks out there all of them are the cornerstones of a healthy diet; sugar, cream, butter, eggs....


Take the peel off the almonds by swiftly boiling them in water (you can do this in a microwave, it works just fine) and then pestle or grind them into fine pieces.


Separate the egg whites from the yolks (save the yolks for later use) and whip them into a hard foam. Then carefully blend the foam with the ground almond and the sugar without stirring. When done, spread it all out in two equally sized parts (about half a centimeter thin) on an oven plate covered with buttered wax paper.


It should look something like this... Now shove it all into the middle of the oven, which should be heated to about 200'C and forget about it for 15 minutes or so.


Ok, time for the nougat, this is easy and fast. Mix the sugar and the chopped almonds into a pot and let it melt while stirring. Pour it out into a blob onto a buttered plate and leave it there to cool off.


For the fishy but very yummy yellow sauce, blend the cream, sugar, butter and egg yolks and just let it simmer while stirring until it thickens. Then put it to cool off too, preferably in a fridge since it will take a while otherwise.


Relax, almost done, and the worst is over. Take the hard nougat now and pestel it into fine pieces again. Mix the pieces with the yummy yellow sauce and use half of it to cover one of the halves of the cake. Then put the other piece on top and cover that one too with yummy sauce.


And... we're done! All that remains to do now is to eat the cake and digest it. As you can see in the picture, Hirvi is very proud of her hard labor and ready to dig in! :-)