Right, I love making food. Anything savoury I’m your gal. Home made pasta, bread, stews, salads, fish you name it. But when it comes to baking I always feel a bit meh. And I don’t know why. But after seeing my instagram feed filled with pictures of creamy, delicious looking Swedish semlor I couldn’t stop my urge for something sweet. But could I be bother making a semla? No. The point with semlor is that it fills me with the same feeling I get when someone asks me if we should bake cinnamon buns. I LOVE cinnamon buns, don’t get me wrong. But I’ll only eat 3. ok, who am I kidding I’ll eat 7 in one go. But then I get full and almost always feel sick. The remaining 25 cinnamon buns either goes dry or get put in the freezer and then probably never sees the light of day. Baking semlor is the same process. You cannot make one but you have to bake at least 25. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. For the non-swedes out there you must be thinking “BUT PATRICIA, WHAT IS A SEMLA?!” First of all semlor is plural for semla. A semla is a Swedish cream bun which has a marzipan type filling, whipped cream and dusted with powdered sugar. These are eaten leading up to and during Lent in Scandinavia. In Sweden the are most popular and bakeries start selling these already in January. Fat Tuesday – Shrove Tuesday or Mardi Gras – is the day when we eat at least one and maybe more of these buns. We basically fatten up before Lent. I know, I know … what’s not to like about it. Well, on the contrary to the cinnamon buns which I’ll gladly eat 7 (in one go), I just cannot bring myself to do the same when it comes to semlor. So I was contemplating how to quench my thirst for something sweet, when I remembered that my dad used to make this delicious carrot cake and I just had to give it a go. It’s probably one of the simplest cakes and you only need one bowl to put all your ingredients in which means minimal washing up!
Ingredients
150 g (1.5 dl) sunflower oil
2 eggs
300 g (3 dl) sugar
300 g (3 dl) flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 1/2 tsp bikarbonat
3 carrots grated
1 apple grated
2½ tsp ground cinnamon
1½ tsp vanilla extract
Icing
4 tbsp Crème fraîche
1 tbsp Cream cheese
1 tbsp Icing sugar
How to:
Heat the oven to 175C. Line a cake tin with removable sides with baking parchment. Whisk the eggs, vanilla and sugar in a bowl until fluffy. Mix the flour, cinnamon, apple, carrots, bikarbonat, baking soda and oil into the egg and sugar mix.
Pour the mix into the baking tin. Cook for 40 minutes.
For the icing
Whisk the Crème fraîche and cream cheese fluffy with an electric whisker. Once fluffy, mix in the icing sugar and then pour over the cake once cool.
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Jag blir så otroligt glad om ni klickar på det lilla hjärtat så jag vet ifall ni gillar det jag gör.
