Ellen Svinhufvud kakku, coffee meringue cake

Layers of almond meringue with a coffee flavoured buttercream filling make up this fabulous cake. It was my choice for our wedding cake years back and this summer I decided to try to make it myself for a big summer party. Quite a success 🙂 I found the recipe on the net site of a Finnish food magazine Maku (“Taste” in English). The cake is an old Finnish classic named after the wife of the third President of Finland, Ellen Svinhufvud. While her husband was in office in the 1930’s, she used to serve the cake at her coffee parties. My home made version turned out quite perfect as it wasn’t as sweet as I recalled.  Here’s the recipe translated into English:

Ingredients: for the meringue

6 egg whites

3 1/2 dl icing sugar

150 g ground almonds

for the buttercream filling and frosting on top

1 1/2 dl strong coffee

3/4 dl sugar

1 1/2 dl cream (fresh full fat)

300 g butter

100 g ground almonds

80 g almond chips (and icing sugar) to decorate

Beat the egg whites and icing sugar untill stiff and creamy. Incorporate the ground almonds gently with a spatula. Spread out onto two baking trays making four rectangles about 15*20 cm. Bake at 125°C, one on the top and the other on the bottom shelf of the oven for 1 1/2 hours changing the trays’ position a couple of times. Remove the baking sheets while still warm and leave to cool.

Dissolve the sugar into the hot coffee, add the cream and leave to cool. Meanwhile beat the butter into a white foam. Add the cooled coffee in a very thin stream while beating fast, waiting for the mixture to blend well before adding more liquid. Mix in the almonds last.

Cover each meringue sheet with about a quarter of the buttercream. With the last quarter cover the sides of the cake too. Toss the almond chips on a hot dry frying pan until they are slightly coloured. Cover the cake with the almonds and sprinkle on some icing sugar if you wish. Place in the fridge until you serve the cake. It’s easier to cut into pieces when it’s cold.

I made four times this batch of the recipe and baked the meringue into big sheets the size of my oven pans (about 30*40 cm). I ended up making one big cake with three layers and one smaller one with the fourth sheet of meringue that I cut into three. The big one made 48 pieces of 5*5 cm slices and the smaller one was the back up. There wasn’t much left of the smaller one either 🙂

Ellen Svinhufvudin kakku on kutakuinkin parasta mitä tiedän. Se oli aikoinaan valintamme hääkakuksi ja nyt päätin yrittää itsekin tehdä sitä kesäjuhliimme. Oivan ohjeen löysin Maku-lehden sivuilta. Lopputulos oli vähemmän makeaa kuin muistin ja aivan erinomaisen hyvää, myös vieraiden mielestä!

Tein ohjeen mukaan neljä pellillistä marenkipohjia. Käytin niistä kolme isoon kakkuun ja viimeisestä pellillistä tuli kolmikerroksinen varakakku. Eipä jäänyt paljoakaan rääppiäisiin 🙂