Norwegian Budapest Cake

The 17th of May, Norway’s Constitution Day, is just around the corner, which has me thinking about all my favorite Norwegian cakes. I was tempted to make Kvæfjordkake, also called verdens beste (world’s best), which really is one of the best cakes in the world. But right now I’m staying in a cottage in Lofoten with a tiny kitchen, so I decided to make something a bit more simple, but equally delicious: Budapest cake!

And if you’re confused why I would bake a Hungarian cake for Norway’s national day, let me confuse you a bit more. Budapest roll cake is actually a Swedish cake, made of a hazelnut meringue rolled with cream and mandarins. But Norwegians have made their own twist on the Budapest cake, which is actually a lot like a simplified Kvæfjord cake in roll form. And it’s so delicious!

Norwegian Budapest cake is made with a meringue sponge cake topped with almonds and rolled with a vanilla cream and berry filling. If you love verdens beste you will love this cake, and you might appreciate that instead of making a separate sponge and meringue, here we combine the two into one delicious meringue sponge layer.

Tips

If you’re making the vanilla custard here from scratch, you can set aside the egg yolks to use in the custard.

You’ll definitely want to use an electric mixer to beat the egg whites, as you need to get nice stiff peaks here. First whisk the egg whites into soft peaks, and then continue whisking as you add in the sugar, whisking until you get stiff peaks.

Then fold in the flour and vanilla to make a smooth batter.

You don’t need a cake form for this cake. Instead you simply spread the batter across a piece of baking paper that fits your baking sheet. This cake is supposed to look a bit rustic, so it doesn’t have to be perfect!

Then sprinkle generously with sliced almonds before baking for twenty minutes.

Vanilla custard

Once the cake goes in the oven, start preparing the vanilla custard so that it has sufficient time to cool.

If you don’t want to make the vanilla custard you can easily use any type of vanilla custard or pudding you like. You will need about 2 cups of vanilla custard for the cake filling.

Heat the milk and half of the sugar in a saucepan over medium heat. Split open the vanilla pod with a knife and carefully scrape out the seeds, adding them to the saucepan. If you don’t have a vanilla pod you can add a teaspoon of vanilla extract instead.

Once the milk starts to bubble in the saucepan, pour about half of it into the bowl with the egg mixture, whisking the entire time. Then return the saucepan to the heat and pour the egg and milk mixture from the bowl back into the saucepan, whisking the whole time.

Let the custard cook for 2 minutes, whisking the entire time. By the end it should be quite thick and harder to whisk.

Once the 2 minutes are up, remove the custard from the heat and pour it into a clean bowl. Cover with plastic wrap, placing it directly touching the top of the custard. Let the custard cool while the mandelboller dough finishes rising.

Once the cake has cooled completely, flip it over onto another sheet of baking paper and peel the baking paper off of the bottom of the cake.

Whip the cream and fold in the vanilla custard. Spread the vanilla cream evenly across the cake and sprinkle with sliced strawberries, or other berries. Gently roll the cake into a roll, being careful not to let the cream slide out.

You can let the cake chill in the fridge before rolling it, so the cream is firmer and the cake is easier to roll.

Store the cake in the fridge – it tastes almost better the second day, when the cream has seeped into part of the sponge.

You can switch the recipe from US measurements to metric by clicking from “US Customary” to “Metric” under Ingredients.