Cake #10 - Brita Cake

Brita Cake is a traditional Finnish summer cake. It is often baked in late summer when your garden produces an abundance of berries and you desperately need to eat them with every meal before the birds eat them all. If not baking Brita Cakes you could be making squash or jam or simply freezing berries to be used during the dark winter months when you need all vitamin C you can get to keep you going and to prevent winter depression. But cakes are the most fun...!

Sunday being the last day of August and therefore the last day of summer, I wanted to bake one more summer cake and what could have been a better choice than Brita Cake to celebrate once more the beautiful summer lived and now gone.

Brita Cake is a combination of a cake and a meringue. Filled with whipped cream it is fluffy and airy and the berries (rather choose some that are a bit sour if you can) give it freshness and elegance. Good Bye Summer of 2014!

Brita Cake

Base:

250 g butter

200 ml caster sugar

2 tsp vanilla sugar

4 egg yolks

200 ml milk

300 ml plain flour

3 tsp baking powder

Meringue:

4 egg whites

300 ml caster sugar

Filling:

500 ml double cream to be whipped

2 tbsp caster sugar

500 g berries of your choice, I had raspberries, blueberries and strawberries

1. Preheat oven to 175C/350F and line an oven tray (mine is 400 mm x 300 mm) with baking parchment. 

2. Cream together butter and sugars.

3. Add egg yolks and mix well.

4. Add dry ingredients and milk.

5. Spread dough evenly on baking parchment.

6. Whip egg whites together with sugar until stiff.

7. Spread egg white mix evenly on top of base dough. 

8. Bake in the oven for about 20 minutes until slightly brownish. 

9. Remove from baking tray and let cool before filling.

10. Cut your cake the way you like - I cut mine into three rectangles to make the cake a 3-layered one. 

11. Fill with whipped cream and berries of your choice and leave some berries on top if you like or decorate with edible flowers. 

12. Do not bake only in the summer but all year round!!! - Brita Cake with cranberries at Christmas?