Chocolate Cake with Norwegian Brown Cheese Frosting

My friend Sam lives in Philadelphia and recently messaged me excited that she had found Norwegian brown cheese at her local Trader Joe’s. And then just a few days later my friend Ashley in Georgia sent me a photo of a block of Ski Queen brunost (brown cheese) she had bought. And so to celebrate I decided to publish a new brown cheese dessert: chocolate cake with brown cheese frosting!

This is a simple chocolate cake based off of my kärleksmums recipe. It’s not too sweet and pairs perfectly with the distinct Norwegian flavor of the brown cheese frosting. A lot of my friends have compared Norwegian brown cheese to peanut butter, so it’s no surprise that it works so well with chocolate.

Brown cheese is made from leftover whey from the cheesemaking process, so it’s not actually technically a cheese. The whey is boiled down until it caramelizes. In Norway you can buy brown cheese made both from cow’s milk and from goat’s milk, with slightly varying flavors. This time I made the frosting with Gudbrandsdals brown cheese, but any variation will work fine here.

Trader Joe’s and Kroger sometimes carry Ski Queen brown cheese, otherwise you can order it online.

You can find all of my brown cheese recipes here.

Tips

I like to start off with slicing the brown cheese, so it softens a bit and melts more easily into the butter when making the frosting. I use a cheese slicer to slice it into thin slices, but you can also cut it into small pieces instead.

To prepare the cake batter, first melt the butter and set it aside to cool a bit. Then mix the dry ingredients together in a medium bowl. I like to whisk them a bit to get out any lumps.

Use an electric hand (or stand) mixer to whisk the eggs, sugar and vanilla (I use vanilla sugar, but you can also use vanilla extract). Whisk for 3 to 5 minutes, until the mixture is pale and fluffy. The use a sift or strainer to add the dry ingredients to the egg mixture. Gently fold the dry ingredients in without mixing the batter too much (the strainer helps to remove any lumps) until you have a smooth batter.

Then add the milk to your melted butter and fold it into the batter.

While the cake is in the oven, prepare the brown cheese frosting. I intentionally made this frosting a bit less sweet because the chocolate cake is already sweet, but you can always add more powdered sugar after tasting if you like.

Melt the butter and add the brown cheese. The butter should be warm enough to melt the brown cheese. Don’t worry if the brown cheese separates – this can happen when it is heated. But it will become smooth again when mixed with the electric mixer.

Add the sugar and cream cheese and use an electric mixer to whisk it until you get a smooth frosting. Feel free to add more sugar if you like.

Once the cake is fully cooled, remove it from your cake form and spread the frosting evenly across the top and sides of the cake. Enjoy!

The cake tastes best the first day, but it will last for a few days if you cover it in plastic wrap. You can add a few toothpicks to the top of the cake so the plastic wrap doesn’t stick to the top.

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