Wednesday, November 15, 2006

Sticky Chocolate Cake with Nougat Topping



Sticky chocolate cake - kladdkaka - is one of Sweden's most loved baked goods. Everyone has their own version. Most are quite like American brownies. I fiddled around with this one for my brother's fiancé Thina. She asked me to bake a birthday-ish cake that she could take with her on a hiking trip. (She and her friend Charlotte have a very cool business where they take customers on hikes and mountain climbing expedition! It's called Go Camp - the website is right here.) Anyway. This cake holds up very well - it won't melt or become dry or mushy. Perfect. It's topped with Danish nougat from Odense - it's actually some sort of hazelnut gianduja, I think. Very sweet, slightly nutty. Substitute with what you have, or leave it out altogether - I just needed something to make it look more festive.

Sticky Chocolate Cake with Nougat Topping

100 g butter
2 eggs
200 g sugar
90 g flour
4 tbsp cocoa powder
1 tsp salt
1 tsp vanilla sugar
150 g dark chocolate
coconut flakes
100 g nougat or gianduja

Heat the oven to 175°C. Butter a springform and spread coconut flakes on the bottom and the sides of the form. Melt the butter and let cool. Beat eggs and sugar until fluffy, and add salt, vanilla, cocoa and flour. Add the butter and stir until well combined.

Coarsely chop the chocolate, and mix it with the batter. Pour into the prepared pan and bake for about 20 minutes. Start checking a few minutes early - do NOT overbake this. Like a brownie, it needs to be sticky!

Let the cake cool for a few minutes, then cover with very thin slices of nougat. (A cheese sliced comes in handy!) Spread it out a bit as it melts. Decorate with more coconut, chocolate sprinkles or whatever you would like.

Serve with a large glass of cold milk! Mmm!

Half a batch - a much thinner cake, which means a heftier nougat-to-chocolate ratio:



The recipe in Swedish:
Kladdkaka med nougat

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

Looks yummy, especially the half batch as I love nougat :-)

Nikki said...

I try to do my weekend grocery shopping on Thursdays, so I saw this just in time! It looks wonderful, so I'll give it a go for the weekend. Thanks for the inspiration!

Anonymous said...

The sticky chocolate cake looks really good, do you have information about how healthy this food though? I'm sure it tastes brilliant though and I suppose it is made fresh so..

Anonymous said...

how sticky?

Anne said...

Dagmar - I totally agree!

Nikki - oh, hope you like it!

Rav - healthy? Hah! It's not healthy at all - in the sense that it has lots of fat and sugar. I suppose it'd depend on your definition of healthy. :)

Gustad - to your liking. Some like theirs very sticky, almost runny. It should at least be moist. :)

Anonymous said...

Läckert.

Anonymous said...

Well it still sounds great at least! I am looking for the 'traditional' Swedish dishes - have you got links on your site where I should link or maybe you could do some sort of post..?

Anne said...

Rav - check out Sweden.se. Also, I have lots of more or less traditional Swedish dishes - very recently I've posted about kroppkakor and kåldolmar, and you can find lots of other stuff here as well. Are you looking for anything in particular?

Anonymous said...

I love your kladdkaka...
Ciao

Nikki said...

I tried it! I never thought I'd say this, but it might actually be too sweet for me! Ha! It's good, though. And my husband loves it. And we'll have more after our dinner tonight! :)

Mirte said...

Thanks for the recipe! I tried it and a whole party full of people LOVED it. The nougat didnt really melt though... And I couldn't get nutless nougat in Holland where I live, so I got nougat with nuts which was actually not a bad idea at all.