Celebrations Norwegian style

Traditional celebration cake for Constitutional Day
in Norway today

17 mai ~ 17th May



Hip hip hurrah for i dag er det 17 mai!

Today is Norwegian Constitutional Day, the day Norway became independent and began with their own royal family in 1814.

It's a national holiday and parades through out each town and village across the whole country takes place today.  From early morning brass bands march and celebrational breakfasts are eaten.  Norwegians party all day long with friends and family.

Gathering all the decorations the night before is
somewhat of a late night tradition in our household

  
One of the 'must' have on the food list is the celebration cake known as kransekake, I have written about it several times before but it is so special, I thought you would not mind indulging me again this year.

Kransekake
You will need:
500g almonds with skin on , you can bought ready ground
500g icing sugar
3-4 egg whites
butter for melting
semolina or fine breadcrumbs
icing sugar for decoration

Grind the almonds

Mix with the icing sugar and add egg whites
one at a time, do not make the
dough overly sticky, be careful

It should be a consistency between
crumbly and slightly sticky

Melt butter and brush over rings, add
semolina or breadcrumbs, this helps
 to avoid dough sticking to the rings

Pipe or hand roll (to about a finger width)
mixture to fill the rings

Bake in a preheated oven for 10-12 minutes
at 180 degrees Celsius

Gently remove from rings, this can be quite
precarious and build up into a tower stack

You can either pipe icing sugar on individual rings
before completing the stack or you can drizzle
icing sugar over the tower once formed

Decorating the tower really brings it alive

Decorate with celebratory paraphernalia

I must confess to not creating the perfect kransekake this year, I was too impatient this morning, having meant to make it last night but was not feeling well.  I awoke early this morning to make it.  Taking it out of the oven too early and stacking it before it had cooled properly it began to collapse with the weight of the top rings once I had turned my back on it.  So how to save the day... I simply removed the lower rings, iced them as normal and just laid them around the edge of the now much shorter kransekake.  Do you think anyone will notice?

All ready to party

After having baked the kransekake, I tuned in on live streaming and watched a little of the children's parade in Oslo and saw the royal family waving from their palace balcony, I may not be in Norway but I can still join, the wonders of the internet.

Norwegian royal family watching the parades in Oslo today

Each area of Norway has it's own traditional dress and you can place people by the costume they wear, mine comes from Vest Telemark, where I hail from, I love it and am very proud of it.  It is hand embroidered and was made to measure for me in 1988.  When bought for a young girl it is made with excess material to accommodate the ever changing shape of a woman... (thank goodness)



The hemline of the dress is 3 meters, think of all
that embroidery, it took 6 months to make

 

The accompanying purse which hangs from the hand woven belt
 has the date of make embroidered on it.  Here you also
 see some of the silver jewellery that belongs to such an outfit.

 

 

♥   Gratulerer med dagen til dere alle   ♥