Icelandic cooking, recipes and food

This is a big recipe, enough for 6 cookie sheets. You can use it to make 1 1/2 cake or a six-layer cake. It is hard to make it smaller and still retain the correct thickness of the dough. Ingredients: 11/2 kg flour 900 g brown sugar 6 tsp baking soda 9 tsp ground cloves 10 tsp ground cinnamon 8 tsp ginger 900 g butter or margarine 6-7 eggs Buttercream: 600 g butter, softened 900 g icing sugar 2 egg yolks 2-3 tsp vanilla essence Rhubarb jam Instructions:  Mix together all the dry ingredients on a clean, dry table and crumble the cold butter/margarine into it until well mixed. (Use your hands to squish it in, or use a pastry cutter). Make a mound of the mixture and make a hole in the centre of it. Add the eggs and syrup and knead until well mixed. (This does not as much kneading as bread, only just enough to get everything well mixed). Divide the dough into six parts. Dust each with flour and roll out into even-sized portions onto well greased cookie sheets. Bake

Brúnkaka" simply means "brown cake" in Icelandic, and the alternative name, "brúnterta" means the same, although "terta" comes from the same root as the English word for "tart". In Icelandic "terta" is a fancier alternative to calling a cake "kaka". Unlike the "Lísu brúnterta " recipe that I once posted, this one gets its colour not from cocoa powder, but from syrup or brown sugar and spices. I am posting two recipes, one today with syrup and one tomorrow with brown sugar, as some people may not have access to golden syrup. My grandmother makes these year round, but this Christmas season I discovered that for two of my friends, this cake is closely linked with Christmas from them. Here is the syrup version: Ingredients: 1 kg flour 500 g white sugar 5 tsp baking soda 3 tsp baking powder 1tsp ground cloves 5 tsp ground cinnamon 900 g butter or margarine 500 g golden syrup (Lyle's is the brand