Coffee, Cardamom, Pistachio Cream Cake

Well, the name is a mouthful. As is the cake! Gentle comedy.

You may have noticed my lack of posting in August, a holiday hiatus, if you will. The Swede and I have been halfway around the world, and back again, but we are both firmly at home now. I plan to do some traveling-related cooking in the near future, but for now, cake!

So, I bought some pistachios the other day, so I decided to try out all the pistachio recipes that I had been hankering after over the last little while.

First installment: pistachio cookies. Second installment is this epic, flavourful, crazy cake. It sounds like it shouldn’t work, and the colour scheme is weird, but damnit if it isn’t one fine piece of baking. I’m really surprised that it isn’t Swedish recipe actually, it covers one of the main Swedish flavours (cardamom) and one of the main Swedish food groups (coffee). Changing the pistachios to almonds would probably be delicious and make it a Svensk trifecta.

For the coffee, I just made a little extra bit of filter coffee in the morning, but instant coffee dissolved in boiling water would work just as well.

One of my boyfriend’s faves, and he doesn’t give out praise lightly!

Semlor

Happy Pancake Day, guys!

Now, as amazing as pancakes are, I felt the need to mix it up a bit this year. Other countries have their own traditions on this most holy carbohydrate-loading day, so I decided to copy the Swedes and make my Swedish boyfriend’s favourite pastry EVER.

Semla (plural, semlor) are these little sweet cardamom spiced buns, with the top cut off allowing it to be filled with an almond mixture and topped with whipped cream, before placing the lid back on. 

They are understated and decadent. There is no “triple chocolate fudge” element, but they still pack a flavourful and rich punch. To prove they are no joke, when I was doing some reading around these, I read that King Adolf Frederick of Sweden died in the 1700s by topping off a decadent meal with fourteen of the early version of these buns.

Full disclosure, I don’t eat cream because it is weird to me, so I don’t really chow down on these bad boys often. I feel like I should clarify one of my above statements, they are my boyfriend’s favourite FOOD ever. So he isn’t totally crying that I’m not pinching any of his precious semlor.