Kransekake Norwegian Celebration cake

18th December

We love all things sweet in this house and despite baking so much in the lead up to Christmas we do not eat that much of it ourselves. The majority of that made is plied on visitors or given away as gifts. We will not be rolling out of the house quite yet. That said, Norwegians do know how to make an incredibly sweet celebration cake and I am yet to find anyone who doesn't like it, as long as they can tolerate nuts.  The cake in question ~ Kransekake 

To see the history of kransekake and the full recipe and instructions, follow my post on it from last year, you can find it here

I was asked a question as to how to make a kransekake if one did not have the specialist equipment used. Well, it is possible just not quite as easy. 

As you can see from the photographs a kransekake is made up of 18 rings placed on top of each other. I have ring moulds for this but if you do not,  you need to draw consentric circles on grease proof paper and then roll your mixture into long thin sausages and place in the marked circles. See below photograph hopefully which may explain it visually better than my written word. 



Draw ever decreasing circle for the layers of the kransekake



Make sure to leave space between the rings
as it will swell a little in baking

I made only six rings in this way as an example to show you. My son is delighted as now he will share this with his friends. 



An example of 6 rings made without
specialist kransekake equipment



Icing should be zig zagged

Mini crackers, ribbon and flags are often
seen as decoration, but you can do whatever
you like on the kransekake

I did  however have my first EVER failure with kransekake this week and so I shall be making another sometime between now and Christmas. I had the oven temperature too high by mistake which meant that the mixture whilst in the oven swelled up too quickly and too much. Thus on completion of baking the rings were much more swollen than normal and on closer inspection were hollow, as all the mixture went into the engage red size if the rings!  It tastes fine but it's not as it should be and does not look as magnificent as usual. Take a look...



Easy storage and transportation box
for the kransekake



Can you see how hollow this one has become,
this is NOT how it should look. 
Lesson learnt, do not have oven temperature too high!!



Couldn't lift off the bottom tings to ice
them individually, hence the messy icing. 
Am very embarrassed!

Do pop over to last years post on kransekake and see his it should be please

Just a week to go till the big day. I am so excited. Keep well and thank you to everyone who has commented. I love having a two way flow of words with you. Brings the blog alive. Thank you ❤️