Norwegian Ring Cake
Ingredients
- Dough:
- 1/2 lb ground almonds
- 1/2 lb Sugar (Icing) (powdered sugar)
- 1.5 egg whites
- Icing:
- 1 c Sugar (Icing)
- 1/2 egg white
- 1/4 t lemon juice
Method
For the dough:
Preheat oven to 300F.
Mix together the dough ingredients until the mixture is a thick paste. You could use a food processor (particularly handy if you got whole or slivered almonds and ground them yourself in the food processor), or perhaps a spoon; I used a handheld electric mixer and it worked well.
Mark off 13 rings on the unwaxed side of baking paper (or parchment), starting at a diameter of 5" and making each subsequent ring 1/4" less in diameter, down to 2". Be sure to mark them out side by side and with a bit of space between them (though the very smallest two can fit inside the very largest two). Roll pieces of dough into snakes, then form rings onto the waxed side of the baking paper following the circles you drew earlier.
Or, generously grease the flour kransekake ring forms and pipe the mixture into the rings. Place on baking sheets.
Bake for 30-35 minutes, until golden. Remove rings from pans while still warm.
For the icing:
Mix together the powdered sugar, egg white, and lemon juice to make a thin icing. Put the icing into a pastry bag with a fine tip.
To assemble:
Mount one ring upon the other, making a tower. Forst in a zig-zag pattern on each ring before adding the next. Using the icing to fasten decorations onto the cake.
Notes
Notes from source:
This cake is made of almond macaroon rings ranging from about 10 inches in diameter to about 2 inches, stacked in order from the largest on the bottom to the smallest on the top, making an unusual pyramid of cookies. This is the Norwegian Wedding cake, birthday cake, anniversary cake, or baptism cake. It can also be a Christmas cake, or a celebration cake for any other special occasion. The center of the cake is hollow; often a bottle of champagne is placed there when the cake is used for a wedding and the champagne saved for the couple's first anniversary. The cake is traditionally decorated with marzipan flowers or candies affixed to the sides with royal icing, or with little Norwegian flags. For a wedding, the cake may be topped with a beautiful rose. The rings are pressed from a pastry tube into predrawn circles. You can buy kransekake cake forms in Scandinavian import outlets, which make the job much easier!
The traditional cake is made with ground almonds, egg whites, and powdered sugar. Another version is made of butter-cookie dough with almond paste, butter, sugar, egg yolks, and flour. Either version makes a towering cake that will serve about 50 guests (a 2- to 3- inch piece each). Traditionally, the cake is served with a rum cream pudding that is spooned from a cut-glass bowl onto dessert dishes beside the piece of cake.
SJ Notes 13 Mar 2012: I didn't care for the taste of this, but it went over smashingly with my book club members, so clearly it's a hit with some. The original recipe (at the link) talks about piping this mixture, but it was just too stiff for me to do that, even with the double-boiling nonsense (which accomplished nothing), so I skipped that and just formed rings by hand. It looked quite homemade in the end, but it was fine.