In her new cookbook Midnight Sun, chef and food writer Trine Hahnemann shares delightful Scandinavian recipes, include a chapter devoted to the cake table, a cherished Danish tradition. In this enchanting extract from the book, she shares how her love of baking cakes started as a child and has continued to today. Like Pancake Day, there should be Cake Table Day, she says!
I have a dream that one day, like Alice, I will fall down a rabbit hole and that there on the other side will be a clearing in the forest with the most wonderful cake table. In my head, it is beautiful, set with exquisite porcelain cups and plates, silver forks and colourful napkins. All around the table there will be new friends, who are maybe just a little weird, but in a kind way. In my Alice in Cake Land vision, we get to eat all the cakes in this beautiful setting, full of wonder and curiosity. Where teapots sing, flowers dance and cakes keep coming and coming as if it were the most natural thing in the world. We chuckle and chatter and drink tea; time has stopped and nothing else is important.
Try Trine Hahnemann's blackberry and rose roulade (made with blackberry jam, but you can use any jam).
The first time I ate cake is a moment I don’t remember. I wish I could, given the marvel and joy of something so simple and delicious. I do know that I was eight when I started baking cakes myself, but without a recipe, as I couldn’t read recipes yet. I remember making a big mess in the kitchen, then sitting impatiently in front of the oven waiting for my ‘cake’ to be cooked. I remember later moving to a new apartment, where the oven had a glass front, so now I could look at the cake – still impatiently – while it was baking. My cakes, I must admit, only began to taste delicious once I learned to beat the butter with the sugar first and then add the eggs, instead of mixing everything at once.
I loved that living with my mormor [grandmother] in the summertime meant cake taking centre stage.
I loved that living with my mormor [grandmother] in the summertime meant cake taking centre stage. There were rituals during the summer months: freshly baked cake at the weekends, with a white tablecloth on the table on the veranda, set with the blue china patterned with birds. People would come, sometimes just a few, sometimes many. Then we would be invited in return to other people’s houses for their cake table. These invitations were casual and never in writing, they would simply say to us: “Kom til eftermiddagskaff e,” “Come for afternoon coffee”. My mormor would wear a good dress and make sure I wore my best dress, too.
I still read Elsa Beskow’s Aunt Green, Aunt Brown and Aunt Lavender for its happy ending, when everybody sits down at the cake table and the children are allowed to eat all they like. There is a beautiful drawing of them all sitting, sharing and eating cake. Or the episode in Astrid Lindgren’s Pippi Longstocking, where she is invited to a cake table with her friends Annika and Tommy and does not know what the customs are, or how to behave in such esteemed circles. The cakes are a delight, and the reader is both excited and terrified for Pippi, who doesn’t seem to care; in all situations, after all, Ms Longstocking remains very much her own person.
Hindbærsnitte are small cakes made of two biscuit layers filled with jam.
I’ve made very many cake tables, both at home and professionally. I have shared my enthusiasm for them in my books. I even made a cake table on The Great British Bake Off some years ago. But I remain steadfast in my belief that there is nothing like a cake table. It has the power to create communities. I think we should have book club cake tables, community cake tables, town hall cake tables, peace talk cake tables. Just as we have pancake day, I think we should have cake table day! Through cake tables, we should invite each other into the beauty of baking for – and caring for – each other. In Scandinavia, we don’t just love to eat cakes, but we have a great appreciation and respect for cakes. We have hygge, fika (coffee breaks), birthdays, breakfast traditions… Somehow, we always find a way to get cake involved in most parts of life.
This is an edited extract of Midnight Sun by Trine Hahnemann (Quadrille AU$49.99, NZD$59.99). Photography: Kim Lightbody. Find more of her cake recipes on her website.
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