Cardamom Coffee Cake

I love Instagram filters. Is it cheating? Oh well. @peterdelicious

In keeping with my recent discovery of delicious Northern European baking, I am bringing you my adaptation of a Norwegian cake I have read about a few times and put off baking for no good reason at all.

I have never been to Norway: we flirt with the idea regularly, and good friends tease us by saying we should all go on a great escape to the fjords, but it hasn't happened and probably won't for ages as said friends have just had a baby. So I think it's OK to have made huge changes to what started off as a fairly trad and standard-looking recipe.

Some people get annoyingly OTT about authenticity. I just don't think it's important. Switch out brown sugar for white; use whole, skin-on almonds that have been roughly chopped instead of buying slivered and blanched ones: it's a cake at the end of the day. Calm down.

You might think this is not a seasonal offering, and you'd be right. But given that right now it is chucking it down outside and we are in the midst of a full on Indian mango ban, what is there to feel Summery about?

(I suppose you could add strawberries.)

Oh yeah, and this is coffee cake in the US sense: there isn't any coffee in it, it's the sort of thing you have alongside your cup of Java.

Cardamom Coffee Cake

You will need:

200g butter, melted
2 tsp ground cardamom
225g caster sugar
3 eggs
300g self raising flour
1 tsp baking powder
200ml milk
3 tbsp dark brown muscovado sugar
3 tbsp almonds, chopped

1. Heat the oven to190°C and grease and line a deep sided 20 x 20cm pan. Melt the butter and set it aside.
2. Beat the caster sugar and eggs with an electric mixer for about five minutes until thick and creamy. 
3. Add the flour, cardamom, baking powder and melted butter, and continue to whisk until smooth. Gradually add the milk, still whisking. The batter will have the texture of a thick soup.
4. Pour into the prepared tin and sprinkle with the almonds and dark muscovado sugar. Bake for 30 minutes. Cool in the tin and cut into squares before serving.