Swedish apple cake

Ingredients

• Tart apples1 kg
• Flour200 g
• Butter — cold150 g
• Sugar150 g
• Cinnamon2 tsp
• Rolled oats80 g
• Milk — for the sauce300 ml
• Cream — for the sauce200 ml
• Egg yolks4
• Vanilla1
• Cornflour1 tsp
• Salt1 pinch

Salt and spices grow more slowly than the rest: doubling a dish does not double the pepper.

Weight converts to ounces and volume to cups. Grams of flour are not turned into cups, because that depends on how tightly it is packed.

Method

1. 1

   Peel the apples, cut them into thick wedges and spread them in a buttered dish.

   15 min

2. 2

   Scatter half the sugar and the cinnamon over the apples and toss them lightly in the dish.

   4 min

3. 3

   Rub the cold butter into the flour with the remaining sugar and salt, using your fingertips, to a coarse crumb.

   10 min

4. 4

   Mix in the oats and scatter the crumble over the apples without pressing it down.

   5 min

5. 5

   Bake at 190 °C for forty minutes, until the top is golden and juice bubbles at the edges.

   45 min

6. 6

   Warm the milk and cream with the split vanilla pod, without letting it boil.

   8 min

7. 7

   Whisk the yolks with the cornflour, pour in the hot milk in a thin stream and cook the sauce to thickness, stirring.

   12 min

About the dish

The apples are tart and cut thick. Thin slices collapse into purée, and what is wanted are distinct pieces that hold under the crumble.

The crumble is rubbed with cold fingertips and never kneaded. Warm hands melt the butter, the crumbs fuse into a dough and the crunch is gone.

The vanilla sauce is a yolk custard rather than cream. In Sweden it is served warm with a hot cake, and the pairing is considered obligatory.

Worth knowing

• — Keep the butter in the freezer until you rub it in. Soft butter gives no crumb, only a dense shortcrust lid.
• — The sauce must not boil. Boiling scrambles the yolk and gives sweet scrambled egg instead of a custard.
• — The cake is served hot. Cooled, it loses the contrast of crisp top against warm apple that the whole thing is for.

Nutrition

Per serving at the base yield, calculated from the ingredients rather than measured in a lab.

Calories

520 kcal

Protein

7 g

Fat

28 g

Carbs

62 g

More from Sweden

• Köttbullar — Meatballs on a panade of bread and cream, in a cream sauce, with lingonberry and mashed potato.
• Kanelbullar — Cinnamon buns knotted rather than rolled. The cardamom in the dough matters more than the cinnamon inside.
• Toast Skagen — Prawns in a dill mayonnaise on fried bread, with roe on top.