Cake #94 - Lingonberry Cake

Sunday Traditional Cake - Lingonberry Cake.

To be honest, this cake is not really a traditional one - as a cake, that is. Lingonberry buns would be. So this cake is actually a giant traditional lingonberry bun but as it is the size of a cake, I can call it a cake.

In Ireland you can get lingonberry jam from IKEA and frozen lingonberries from some of the Eastern European shops like I did now. I do not use lingonberry that much in baking but to go with various foods. Fried liver, liver casserole, meatballs, spinach pancakes, blood pancakes... Now that I am writing this, I realise I have not had any blood pancakes for ages! They used to be one of my favourite foods when I was in school back in Finland. Always served with lingonberry jam. I can see there are some food producers still making blood pancakes and you can buy them ready-made in the shops in Finland. Probably not that popular nowadays and not even on school lunch menus any more. What a pity.

Lingonberry Cake

300 ml lukewarm milk

25 g fresh yeast (or 1 bag / 7 g fast action dried yeast)

100 ml  sugar

½ tsp ground cardamom

1 egg

100 g melted butter

about 1 litre plain flour

300 g lingonberries (defrost if frozen)

100 ml granulated sugar

Glazing

1 egg

Icing

200 ml icing sugar

about 1 tbsp water

1. Dissolve yeast in warm milk.

2. Add sugar, cardamom and egg and mix well.

3. Start adding flour gradually.

4. After you have kneaded in about half of the flour, add melted butter.

5. Knead in more flour until your dough is not sticky any more but still soft. 

6. Leave the dough to rise in a warm place until double in size, for about half an hour.

7. Line a springform pan ( Ø 28 cm) with baking paper. My favourite way to do this is to wet a piece of baking paper and crumple it into a ball to get rid of the excess water and make it softer so it is easier to line the form.

8. Form a giant bun of the dough and place it in the pan.

9. Let the cake rise for about half an hour.

10. Preheat the oven to 200C / 390F.
11. Glaze your cake with egg, place lingonberries (mixed with sugar) on top of the cake and bake in the oven for about 40 minutes.

12. Let the cake cool completely - it is easy to remove the cake from the pan either by removing the sides of the springform pan or just carefully lifting the baking paper together with the cake.

13. Drizzle or pipe the icing on top of your cake and enjoy fresh (or freeze on the day of baking).