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A Little Something With the Coffee

- a cornucopia of baked goods

My father remembers being sent, as a teenager, on an errand to the next farm. This was not long after Christmas and the farmer's wife offered him a cup of coffee. He was the only guest but she proceeded to bring all kinds of baked goods to the table, despite his protests. He says he counted seventeen different sorts of cakes and cookies there. And she probably went on and on excusing herself for her poor hospitality – Icelandic housewives used to do that all the time, while heaping goodies on the table. This was an ordinary Icelandic housewife, caught up in the baking frenzy that gripped Icelandic women in the early twentieth century, when they finally had both ovens for baking and enough flour to play with.

"Coffee and with it" is a common term in Iceland - "with it" means some baked goods, sometimes elaborate layer cakes, sometimes simple coffee cakes, sometimes cookies, biscuits or muffins, sometimes fried cakes, pancakes or other such treats. And sometimes a little bit of everything.

Crepes
Pönnukökur
Makes 20 to 25 crepes

Don’t expect an American-type pancake if an Icelander offers you pancakes with jam and whipped cream. An Icelandic pönnukaka is a very thin crepe, almost always cooked in a special heavy crepe pan that is around 7½ inches in diameter, with only ¼-inch-high sides. This pan is rarely used for anything but crepes, pancakes, and scones. Nothing sticks to it and it is never washed. (One of my children did wash my pan in 1991. The incident has not been quite forgiven.)

The crepes are either drizzled liberally with sugar while still warm, rolled fairly tightly into cigar shapes and stacked up like logs, or they are left to cool, then spread with jam (rhubarb is traditional, but strawberry or raspberry jam is more popular now). A liberal amount of stiffly whipped cream is heaped on the center of the crepe, which is then folded in half and again into a triangle. The filled crepes are arranged in overlapping rows on a serving plate and served with coffee. Almost everybody loves them and many will tell you that they consider either this or crepes rolled with sugar the most Icelandic dish there is.

Add a little more milk to the batter if the crepe is too thick; whisk in a little flour if it is too thin and is difficult to turn.

2 eggs
2 cups milk
1 teaspoon vanilla or lemon extract
1 cup flour
2 tablespoons sugar
½ teaspoon baking powder
Pinch of salt
4 tablespoons butter

Whisk the eggs with the milk and flavoring. Stir in flour, sugar, baking powder and salt and whisk until smooth.

Heat the crepe pan. Melt the butter in the hot pan and stir it into the batter. Pour around 2 tablespoons of the batter into the hot pan, tilting it and rotating it while pouring to enable the batter to spread all over the surface before it begins to cook. The crepe should be very thin. Cook at medium-high heat for a minute or less, or until the underside is golden brown.

While the crepe cooks, run the tip of the spatula around the outer edge to loosen it and prevent it from burning. Turn it with the spatula and cook for 10-15 seconds on the other side. Continue cooking until the batter is used up.

Roll the pancakes with sugar, or spread them out on a work surface to cool if they are to be filled with cream.
 
Deep-Fried Bows
Kleinur

Almost every European nation has a recipe for deep-fried bows of some kind. They have been known in Denmark since medieval times. In Iceland, they are first mentioned in the old cookbook published in 1800. They became widespread in the nineteenth century, originally as a festive treat, but later they were regarded as everyday cookies.

Most Icelandic kleinur are plump and soft but some prefer them to be thinner and more crisp. For that, just add a little less buttermilk to obtain a stiffer dough and roll it out more thinly. Icelandic kleinur are never sprinkled with sugar while hot, as is done with some similar cookies elsewhere. They are always eaten plain with coffee and are at their best when still warm.

Kleinur seem to be very closely knit to a grandmotherly image and youngish Icelandic grannies are sometimes heard to say: “Yes, sure, I’m a grandmother, but I’m not so old that I stay at home and make kleinur!”

½ cup butter or margarie
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 cup buttermilk or milk
2 teaspoons ground cardamom or grated zest of 1-2 lemons
5 teaspoons baking powder
4 cups flour, or as needed
Shortening or Crisco for deep-frying

Cream the butter or margarine with the sugar, then whisk in the eggs. Stir in buttermilk or milk and cardamom.

Mix the baking powder with half the flour and stir it in. Add more flour as needed, until the dough is soft and smooth but no longer sticky. Try not to overwork the dough, as that tends to make it tough. Knead it until smooth, then divide it into two or more pieces and roll each piece out fairly thin on a floured surface.

Cut it into 3 cm wide strips and cut each strip diagonally into 6-8 cm pieces. Cut a slit in each piece and pull the top corner of the piece through the slit.

Heat the fat to 180°C and fry the kleinur, a few at a time, for 1½ -2 minutes on each side, turning once, or until dark golden brown. Remove with a slotted spoon and drain on absorbent paper. Eat warm with cold milk or let cool and serve with coffee.

Vinarterta
Vínarterta
Makes a 9-inch, 6-layer cake

Vínarterta is sometimes just about the only Icelandic word that Canadians and Americans of Icelandic descent know. When their ancestors left Iceland in the late nineteenth or early twentieth century, vínarterta was at the height of its popularity. It is a grand-looking cake that was, due to the thin layers, much easier to make in the primitive ovens of the time than thicker cakes would have been, and could even be baked without an oven. The prune filling was the closest thing to a jam that most Icelandic housewives could make but when rhubarb patches became widespread, rhubarb jam largely replaced the more expensive prunes.

The name has nothing to do with wine (vín) or friends (vinir), as many believe. It means literally “Vienna Cake”. The cake came to Iceland from Denmark but it probably does originate in Vienna; I’ve seen almost identical recipes for Wiener Torte in German cookbooks from the late nineteenth century. These cakes are flavored with cardamom and filled with jam.

This is a slightly adapted early twentieth century Icelandic recipe that may be somewhat different to what Americans familiar with the cake expect, although not as different as many of the vínarterta versions they will encounter in Iceland today. These are often made of soft, spongy layers, filled with strawberry or raspberry jam, and rarely flavored with cardamom or other spices.

The original recipe does not specify how many layers should be made but when my mother made this cake (not round layers but big sheets), she usually baked four layers. I’m told that for Canadian vinarterta, five layers are a minimum, and six layers are even better.

1 cup margarine or butter, softened
1 cup sugar
2 small eggs
4 cups flour, or as needed
1½ teaspoons baker’s ammonia or baking powder
1 teaspoon freshly ground cardamom
½ cup milk
1½ cup rhubarb jam or prune filling

Cream butter and sugar. Add eggs, one at a time, whisking well between additions. Add flour, baker’s ammonia and cardamom along with the milk and stir to combine. Knead the dough until smooth; it should be soft and just short of sticky. Shape it into a ball, cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least an hour.

Preheat the oven to 375°F. Divide the dough into 6 equal parts. On a floured work surface, roll each part out into a thin disc, around 9 inches in diameter. Arrange the circles on baking sheets lined with parchment paper and bake in the center of the oven for 12 minutes, or until just beginning to brown at the edges.

Sandwich the layers with the jam while still warm. Let cool completely, wrap in foil, and keep for at least a couple of days. If stored in a cool place, the cake will keep for weeks and improve with age.

Prune Filling for Vinarterta
Sveskjumauk á vínartertu
Makes 2 cups

If a prune filling is made at all in Iceland today, it is not usually spiced. The prunes are just stewed with sugar and water or apple juice until tender.
The original recipe calls for soaking the prunes overnight and cooking them until the stones slip out but it is more convenient to use pitted prunes that do not need soaking.

1½ cups pitted prunes
½ cup sugar
1 tablespoon cinnamon
½ teaspoon ground cloves

Put prunes, sugar and spices in a small saucepan and add 1 cup water. Bring to a boil and cook at medium heat, stirring often, until the prunes are soft and the syrup has thickened. You should be able to see the bottom of the pan for a second when you scrape it with a wooden spoon.

Let cool slightly, then pour the prune mixture into the bowl of a food processor and process until smooth. Spread the warm prune filling on each cake layer, except the top.

 
Christmas Cake I
Jólakaka I
Makes 1 loaf cake

This cake still retains the name of its Danish ancestor, julekage, but the name is the only thing that connects it to Christmas these days – it would be hard to find a more everyday, down-to-earth cake. It is extremely common in Iceland and is served at all kinds of occasions. At elaborate coffee parties, where the tables are almost groaning with an overload of elaborate and eye-catching cakes and tortes, decorated with mounds of cream, canned fruit, meringues, chocolate, and other temptations, you will probably see some of the guests – especially older people – go straight to an unassuming plate carrying overlapping slices of jólakaka.

This is a simple cake, very easy to make, but despite that, there are many versions. The following is a fairly modern one.

1 cup butter or margarine, softened
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
½ teaspoon lemon extract, or grated zest of 1 lemon
3 cups flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
¾ cup milk
½ to 1 cup raisins

Preheat the oven to 325°F and grease a 9x5-inch loaf pan. Cream the butter and sugar in a mixing bowl. Whisk in the eggs, one at a time, and add lemon extract or lemon zest. Mix flour and baking powder and stir it in, along with the milk. Mix only until just combined. Stir in the raisins.

Spoon the batter into the loaf pan, smooth the surface, and bake the cake for around 70 minutes, or until a tester inserted into the center of a cake comes out clean. Let the cake cool in the pan for 10 minutes or so, then invert it carefully onto a rack.

 

 Dried Fig Cake
Gráfíkjuterta
Makes an 8-inch, 2-layer cake

Until a few years ago, fresh figs had never been seen in Icelandic shops, but dried figs have been sold for centuries and used to be considered a real delicacy. In the nineteenth century, candy was virtually unknown in Iceland, but when farmers returned from their once-a-year trips to the coastal villages, they would bring home bags of dried figs, prunes, and raisins for the children. Children were usually allowed to keep any loose tufts of wool they found lying in the fields or caught in hedges, and these they collected in a bag, washed and dried them, and sent the wool to the market in the summer. These gatherings would often buy them quite a few figs or raisins to nibble.

Figs were also used for baking, and this old recipe is very much a favorite in my family, as the cake is easy to make and really quite good. The precooking can probably be omitted if partially dried figs are used.

1½ cups roughly chopped dried figs
2 cups flour
½ teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon baking soda
1 cup butter, softened
2/3 cups granulated sugar
2 eggs
1 cup confectioners’ sugar (icing sugar)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Preheat the oven to 350°F and butter and flour two 8-inch cake pans. Place the chopped figs in a small saucepan, add ½ cup water, and cook the figs until almost all the liquid has disappeared. Let cool slightly.

Combine flour, baking powder and baking soda in a bowl. In another bowl, cream 2/3 cups of the butter with the granulated sugar, then whisk in the eggs, one at a time. Gradually stir in the flour, alternating with the warm figs. Divide the mixture between the prepared pans, smooth the surface, and bake for around 20 minutes. Turn out on a rack and let the cakes cool completely.

Cream the remaining 1/3 cup butter with the confectioners’ sugar and add vanilla extract to make a simple buttercream. Spread the buttercream on one of the cakes and sandwich them together.

I sometimes make a delicious variation of this cake by cooking the figs in apple or orange juice and adding a large apple, peeled, cored and roughly chopped, to the batter. Then I bake the cake in one 9-inch pan for around 35 minutes and serve it plain, without any icing.

Wedded Bliss
Hjónabandssæla
Makes a 9-inch, single-layer cake

The Icelandic name for this very popular everyday tart, which is actually a distant relative to the famous Austrian Linzer Torte, is a bit of a mystery. The common explanation is that this version is so quick and easy that practically anyone can make it and it doesn’t often fail, so it is the perfect cake for a young bride to bake when she wants to treat her husband to something special. It is also quite inexpensive.

The same recipe is also used for another tart where the dough is kneaded and rolled, a disc is cut out and placed in a tart pan, and dough strips are arranged in a lattice pattern on top of the jam, as when making Linzer Torte. This tart, properly named furstakaka (Prince’s Cake) also sometimes goes by the name of hjónabandssæla, but that is hardly fitting, since this is a much more fiddly and time-consuming method and hardly the ideal cake for an inexperienced baker to make. Not if she wanted to ensure wedded bliss, anyway.

Rhubarb or prune jam is the traditional filling for this tart but any jam can be used. This recipe can easily be doubled and baked in a 9-inch pan.

1 cup rolled oats
1 cup flour
½ cup loosely packed brown sugar
½ teaspoon baking powder
¼ teaspoon cinnamon
½ cup butter or margarine, softened
½ cup rhubarb jam

Preheat the oven to 375°F. Mix all the ingredients except the jam in a bowl. The mixture should be crumbly but soft. Reserve around ¼ of it for the topping but put the rest into a 7-inch tart pan, preferably with a removable bottom, and press it firmly down and up against the sides. Spread the jam evenly on the bottom and crumble the reserved dough over it.

Bake for around 25 minutes, or until dark golden brown.

Rhubarb Jam
Rabarbarasulta

This is the one and only Icelandic jam, the jam that was used for practically everything – as a cake and cookie filling, on crepes and waffles, on bread, in all kinds of desserts, with roasted meat and meatballs, and so on. Rhubarb jam is still popular but too sweet for many modern tastes. Less sugar can be used but then the jam will not keep as well.

3 pounds rhubarb stalks, preferably red
4 cups sugar
Red food coloring (optional)

Wash and trim the rhubarb stalks and chop them into ½-inch pieces. Place them in a large nonreactive pot. Add the sugar, stir, and let stand for a few hours, or overnight.

Bring slowly to a boil and simmer gently until the jam has the desired thickness – that could take 1½ to 2 hours. If green stalks were used, it might be desirable to add a little food coloring to perk up the color of the jam. Pour it into hot, sterilized jars, close with a tight lit and store in a cool place.

Nanna Rögnvaldardóttir