Easy Norwegian Apple Almond Cake

Some family friends were in Bergen last week, which was of course a great excuse to bake a cake. But I was also leaving for Portugal in a few days, so I didn’t want leftovers. So I decided to make my favorite Norwegian apple cake, which is small enough to finish (almost) in a sitting with a few cups of coffee.

Plus now that it’s August I’m already getting in the autumn spirit (well, aside from this very summery trip to Madeira). And autumn means apples!

Since I had leftover almond paste and sliced almonds from recently baking Swedish almond bars, I decided to make this an apple almond cake and wow, I am always going to make this with almond paste. It was so good, and so simple!

Tips

You’ll notice that this recipe doesn’t make a lot of batter – it’s just enough to fill the bottom of a bread loaf pan. The cake bottom is meant to be fairly thin, with an equal amount of apples on top.

Simply whisk the eggs and sugar together and then stir in the flour and melted butter until you have a smooth batter.

Then spread the batter evenly across the bottom of your loaf pan. Be sure to line your loaf pan with baking paper, otherwise the cake will be hard to remove from the pan.

Then grate (or chop up) your almond paste, which is like a less sweet version of marzipan we often use in baking (in Norway we also use kransekakemasse). You can order almond paste online here, or if you can’t find almond paste at your local grocery store you can use marzipan instead, it will just be sweeter.

Try to spread the grated almond paste as evenly as possibly across the top of the cake batter (it will clump a bit, and that’s fine).

I use two small/medium sized apples for the cake. I usually use the red ones we grow here in Norway, but I think green apples would also be excellent in this cake.

Slice the apples and arrange them across the top of the cake – the pattern doesn’t matter much here as they’re covered in almonds and will soften as they bake.

Then sprinkle the top with cinnamon, brown sugar, and sliced almonds. Bake until the almonds on top are a toasted brown – about 35 minutes.

After the cake is finished baking, let it cool in the pan for a bit before gently lifting the baking paper out of the pan. Then flip the cake over a plate and peel off the baking paper before flipping it back over onto your serving dish.

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