Runeberg Torte (Boozy Almond and Cookie Cakes)
So good you'll want to write a sonnet about it
Hello to all you wonderful RLC subscribers!
To new subscribers, welcome! This newsletter is where I share memoir essays about restaurant kitchen life, and recipes I think you’ll love.
This week I want to tell you about my very favourite cake called Runeberg Torte. It comes from Finland (where I live) and it’s named after a poet called Johan Runeberg who enjoyed cake and booze for breakfast.
It’s easy to make, delicious, and drenched in a liqueur called Swedish Punsch (unless you choose for it not to be, I give you options below).
Thanks for being here,
Wil
A poet with only scraps in the cupboard
If there’s something I love about life in Finland it’s how consistently they invent a cake or pastry or other baked sweet thing to coincide with national days of celebration.
This week (February 5th) was the birthday of Finland’s national poet, one Johan Runeberg. And, true to form, a specific cake has appeared on store shelves in recent weeks to mark the occasion.
There’s even a little story to go along with it…
Back in the 1800s when Johan was writing poems about making bread from tree bark and other brutalities of Finnish rural life, he enjoyed doing so along with something sweet to nibble on.
The story goes that he fancied something sweet one day for breakfast. Unfortunately for Johan there was nothing in the house that could quite scratch his itch.
This is when his wife Frederika (herself a pioneer of Finnish fiction writing) stepped in.
Being a resourceful cook, she created something on the fly with the bits and pieces she had available: a bit of flour, some cream, a few almonds. What she created that day turned out a little dry, so she moistened it with an arrack-flavoured liqueur called Swedish punsch.
Johan enjoyed it so much he took to eating it every day, along with an extra measure of punsch, for his breakfast.
Yes, I’m sure he was a treat to be around by mid-morning…
200 years later and we eat this same cake each year on his birthday.
A recipe for Runeberg Torte
The ingredients list has changed over the years. And like a lot of traditional recipes in Finland, the right way of making a Runeberg torte differs from household to household. But one nice thing about the usual ingredients is the way they maintain the same feel of random things, bits and pieces, being thrown together to make something delicious.
Whereas most cakes require a flour of some sort, fat and eggs, the Runeberg torte requires a small bit of flour, a bit of breadcrumbs or crushed cookies, and also some ground almonds. It still reads to me like a recipe created by someone in a pinch, using up the last of the dry ingredients in the cupboard, just as Frederika did back when her poet husband had a craving for something sweet.
Flavour notes:
People often describe the taste of browned butter as “toasty” or “nutty”. Well, the use of crushed ginger cookies in this recipe gives the cake a thoroughly rich and moreish browned butter flavour. The method includes a few steps to introduce air into the batter as well, which, along with the baking powder, makes the cake beautifully light.
Here’s the thing, this cake is absolutely delicious warm from the oven, or room temperature with a cup of coffee or tea.
But it really becomes something special once it’s enjoyed a cheeky little bath in the arrack-flavoured liqueur called Swedish punsch. The arrack flavour is really something else. It’s a bit like rum, a little like whisky, and, if I’m honest, a little like gasoline in the way really good Riesling sometimes tastes a bit gasoline-y. (If you know what I mean you’ll know I’m not crazy). And I don’t tend to use the word moist in polite company very often but really there’s no other way of describing the soft and effortlessly yielding texture of this liqueur-soaked cake.
My cursory Google search tells me Swedish punsch isn’t such an esoteric Nordic ingredient that it can’t be found elsewhere in the world, either. But I’ve added some substitutions below to make things easy for all.