Ring Toss

« A tower of almond rings popular in parts of Scandinavia for weddings, New Year's and other celebrations. »

I somehow managed to survive two weeks in flyover country, home to the world's largest strip mall. During the mad shopping frenzy the week before Christmas I had some time to bake as I was a bit afraid to venture out into the wilderness of SUVs and rabid shoppers. I had ordered a bunch of stuff from the Baker's Catalogue and had it shipped to my mother's house that in retrospect, given that the stores looked like locusts had stripped them clean, was a wise idea.

One of the things I ordered was a set of kransekake forms. Kransekake is a rather impressive looking cake formed from rings of almond paste cookie that has been baked, cemented together with royal icing and decorated with marzipan or flags and candies. It's a cake that looks a lot like a Fisher-Price Rock-a-Stack toy only without the bright colours. I've never seen it in Finland, but the rest of the Nordic countries seem to enjoy it for weddings, New Year's and other high holidays. The cake is about 7 inches/18 cm wide at the base and stands almost 12 inches/29 cm tall. I figured that if I could find almond paste in the grocery that I'd make it for a nice centerpiece for Christmas dinner. My brother-in-law suggested that I make something "ethnic" and, given that nobody but the Danes and the Norwegians have any idea of what this thing is, it fit that request rather well. :) I think my family liked it, but the cake requires an army of almond lovers to eat the whole thing.

The grocery had lots of marzipan but the space where almond paste should have been was empty so my sister and I had to track down a clerk who made a valiant effort to find the missing shipment of almond paste. The difference between almond paste and marzipan is found only in the ratio of almonds to sugar, the paste having a higher percentage of almonds than the marzipan. My sister was ready to give up after 10 minutes, but I was too close to go home disappointed. :) Twenty minutes and 15 aisles later, I had two tubes of almond paste. I was really surprised that not only did they have almond paste and marzipan but that they had to go find the new shipment. Almonds, as far as I can remember, were never much of a popular baking item in the US. Walnuts and pecans are the most commonly used nuts in baking so perhaps Martha Stewart has been featuring almond paste in a few recipes lately or something. Go Martha.

I used the recipe on the side of box that the kransekake forms came in, but there seem to be two different varieties of dough that is used to make the cake; the Scandinavian variety that uses only almonds, confectioners' sugar and egg whites and the American variety that also includes butter and flour. I made the latter as it was the recipe on the box and I didn't have a decent mixer handy to make what would likely be a more difficult to handle dough as it would be more stiff without the butter and flour. It was surprisingly simple to make, even with the handicap of not having a pastry bag and having to use an antique cookie press that only occasionally pressed the dough through the hole when I squeezed the trigger.

Once home, I thought that I would try to make the cake the Scandinavian way by using only the ground almonds, confectioner's sugar and egg whites just for the sake of comparison and this is where the exercise got interesting. Odense, a manufacturer of marzipan, almond paste and even a pre-made kransekake dough, also has a brief history of the kransekake in Danish. What I couldn't puzzle out on my own, the Nordic perl guys translated for me, but basically it says the cake is a Danish creation. What is curious is how the cake changes form in Sweden and Finland. Instead of using rings, which can also be used to make confections in the form of cornucopias, baskets, bowls filled with custard and cakes topped with whipped cream and strawberries, the krokan is a freeform tower of the same ingredients that is cemented together with caramelised sugar and features praline almonds surrounding the base. I'm not sure how or why the cake changed from the ringed pillar/cornucopia as there's very little information about the cake to be found in any language, but I'd be intrigued to know how and when the transformation came about. I'd almost guarantee that there's bound to be the usual "Swedes have to be different" explanation in there somewhere. :) I did find an entertaining article from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Assembly Required, where a reporter gets a lot more entertainment out of this cake than even I did. :)

Surprisingly, the ground almonds are not so easily found in Helsinki in quantities larger than 80g (In the US, King Arthur sells almond flour in 1 pound bags for about $7). I asked the resident Norwegian at my office if he knew if he knew where I could find a better supply and he told me how his ex-wife used to make him grate the individual almonds one at a time just to make his miserable life even moreso. It's a torture device and it's a cake. :) Some of the Finnish krokaani recipes use warmed marzipan with a small amount of added sugar and egg whites which sounds unreliable, since it would be a bit too easy to wind up cooking the egg whites, as well as being more work than necessary. Both of the recipes I tried worked well and I can't really say which of them I thought tasted better. The traditional recipe is a bit harder to work with since it dries and stiffens quickly, especially on days with low humidity. It also requires a cookie press since it is simply too stiff to use a pastry bag. Rolling ropes of dough out with your hands is an option but it's a lot of work and if you don't roll them evenly you'll get a really irregular browning which won't look as nice. Watch over the rings as they bake as once they start to brown, they go from light brown to dark brown in a blink of an eye.

Buy a set of the rings, make a kransekake and maybe this can be the beginning of the next Scandinavian food craze as there hasn't been much from this part of the world since ABBA, Swedish meatballs and fondue parties faded from the limelight. I had a vision of making the rings out of something like baked spam and then covering the tower with chunks of cheese and such on toothpicks as a salute to the 1970s fixation with foods on toothpicks. The ringed bowl of goo might be fun to experiment with as well. :)

Kransekake / Kransekage / Krokaani / Krokan - Butter cookie style

Makes: one 18-ring kransekake
Time: about 1 hour for cake rings and about 25 minutes to assemble
Source: Kransekake form box

Rings:

• 4 sticks or 450g butter, softened
• 1 cup or 225g almond paste, grated
• 2 cups or 4.75 dl sifted confectioners' sugar
• 1 teaspoon almond extract
• 4 egg yolks
• 5 cups or 11.75 dl sifted flour

Preheat oven to 350F/175C. Grease forms well with butter.

Cream together butter, grated almond paste, sugar and extract until smooth. Beat yolks in well. After sifting, measure flour and add gradually, mixing until smooth.

Put dough into cookie press or pastry bag fitted with 1/2-inch (1.25cm) tip and pipe onto greased ring forms. Bake for 15 minutes or until very lightly browned. Do not remove from rings until cold.

OR

Kransekake / Kransekage / Krokaani / Krokan - Traditional Scandinavian style

Makes: 1 18-ring kransekake
Time: about 1 hour for rings and 25 minutes for assembly
Source: King Arthur/Baker's Catalogue

Rings:

• 1 pound or 455g almond flour, plain or toasted
• 1 pound or 455g confectioners' sugar
• 1/4 cup or 0,60 dl all-purpose flour
• 1/2 teaspoon bitter almond oil or 2 teaspoons almond extract **(I didn't use this - seems excessive)
• 3-4 egg whites

In a medium-sized mixing bowl, whisk together the almond flour, sugar, all-purpose flour, and almond oil or extract. Add 3 egg whites and mix on slow speed for several minutes. Continue mixing, adding part of the fourth egg white as needed, until a firm, cohesive (but not dry) dough is formed. Gather the dough into a ball, and cover it with plastic wrap to keep it from drying out as you prepare the molds.

Grease the molds lightly with butter. Dust your work surface with confectioners' sugar. Grease your hands with oil. Break off pieces of dough and roll them into long 'ropes', about 1/2 inch in diameter. Fit the ropes into the greased molds, pinching the ends firmly together. You can also place dough into a cookie press fitted with a 1/2-inch (1.25cm) hole and pipe onto greased ring forms. The dough is a bit too stiff to use with a pastry bag.

Place the filled molds on a baking sheet and bake the rings in a preheated 400F/200C oven for 10 to 12 minutes, until they're very lightly browned. Let the rings cool for several minutes before removing them from the molds. Cool them completely on wire racks.

Icing:

• 1 1/2 cups or 3,5 dl sifted confectioners' sugar
• 1 egg white

For icing: Whip egg white until foamy. Add sugar and beat until stiff. Add more sugar if not stiff enough. Put in pastry tube fitted with small round tip.

Assembly:

Arrange disks with baked rings in order from the largest to the smallest next to a plate or pedestal you intend to assemble the cake on. Starting with the outermost ring on the largest disk, pipe a small amount of icing onto the top of the ring (the bottom being the smooth side that baked inside the disk. The bottom should always the top surface with assembling the cake.) and place, icing side down, onto the plate. Pipe a zig-zag ribbon of icing onto the ring and place the outermost ring on the next disk on top, being careful to keep the ring centered. Pipe a zig-zag ribbon of icing on top of the ring and repeat until all 18 rings have been attached to the cake. Decorate with small Norwegian flags, marzipan fruit, tiny wrapped presents or foil wrapped candy affixed with toothpicks. You can also assemble the cake around a wine bottle.