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SWEDIS

How to make a delicious strawberry cake with elderflower cream

The strawberry cake with elderflower cream ('Jordgubbstårta med fläderkräm' in Swedish) is a glorious summer cake. Recipe courtesy of John Duxbury, founder and editor of the Swedish Food website.

Published: 16 June 2017 11:00 CEST
How to make a delicious strawberry cake with elderflower cream
Strawberry cake with elderflower cream. Photo: John Duxbury/Swedish Food

This is a light and airy fatless sponge filled with a lovely elderflower custard and sliced strawberries and then topped with whipped cream and decorated with wild strawberries.

Summary

Makes: 12 slices

preparation:20 minutes

Cooking:60 minutes

Ingredients:

For the cake:

margarine and breadcrumbs for the cake tin

4 eggs

200 g (0.9 cups)* caster sugar

50 g (0.4 cups) plain white flour

80 g (0.4 cups) potato flour (starch)

2 tsp baking powder

For the filling:

1 egg yolk

1 tbsp icing sugar (confectioners' sugar)

1 tsp elderflower essence

150 ml (¾ cup) whipping cream

250 g (8 oz) strawberries, hulled and thinly sliced

For the decoration:

150 ml (½-¾ cup) whipping cream

 wild strawberries to garnish

Method:

1. Pre-heat the oven to 175°C (350°F, Gas 4, Fan 160°C).

2. Generously grease a 23 cm (9″) round cake tin and coat with breadcrumbs.

3. Beat the eggs and sugar until light and airy (about 4 minutes with a kMix or KitchenAid on full speed).

4. Mix the plain flour (all-purpose flour), potato flour (starch) and baking powder, then fold into the mixture.

5. Pour the mixture into the cake tin and bake on the lowest rung for approximately 35-40 minutes, until an inserted skewer comes out clean and the cake is just beginning to come away from the sides of the tin.

6. After 2 or 3 minutes turn the cake out onto a wire rack. Let the cake cool completely. (Note that the sides and base are not as smooth as they should be because I didn't grease the cake tin enough!)

7. When cold cut the cake in half horizontally. (Swedes often have a special device for doing this called a tårtdelare.)

8. Make the filling by whisking the egg yolk, 1 tablespoon of icing sugar and ½ teaspoon of elderflower essence together until thick and creamy (about 1-2 minutes when whisked by hand).

9. Whip the cream until it forms soft peaks and then gently fold it into the egg and sugar mixture. Spread it over the bottom cake layer.

10. Crush the sliced strawberries lightly with a spatula or the flat side of a knife and place them on top of the vanilla whip. Place the other half of the cake on top.

11. Whip the cream for decorating until fairly stiff and spread over the top. Decorate with wild strawberries.

12. Serve with lots of extra fresh strawberries!

Tips

– Elderflower essence is sold in some delicatessen shops or online.

– If you can't obtain elderflower essence use a tablespoon or two of undiluted elderflower cordial instead.

– I like to garnish the cake with elderflowers as the scent of the blooms is wonderful

– I also like to garnish the cake with wild strawberries, but if you can’t find any, decorate the top with ordinary strawberries.

– If you have space, it is worth growing some alpine strawberries just for garnishing cakes as they are easy to grow!

Recipe courtesy of John Duxbury, founder and editor of Swedish Food.

FOOD AND DRINK

OPINION: Are tips in Sweden becoming the norm?

Should you tip in Sweden? Habits are changing fast thanks to new technology and a hard-pressed restaurant trade, writes James Savage.

Published: 5 April 2024 13:59 CEST
OPINION: Are tips in Sweden becoming the norm?

The Local’s guide to tipping in Sweden is clear: tip for good service if you want to, but don’t feel the pressure: where servers in the US, for instance, rely on tips to live, waiters in Sweden have collectively bargained salaries with long vacations and generous benefits. 

But there are signs that this is changing, and the change is being accelerated by card machines. Now, many machines offer three preset gratuity percentages, usually starting with five percent and going up to fifteen or twenty. Previously they just asked the customer to fill in the total amount they wanted to pay.

This subtle change to a user interface sends a not-so-subtle message to customers: that tipping is expected and that most people are probably doing it. The button for not tipping is either a large-lettered ‘No Tip’ or a more subtle ‘Fortsätt’ or ‘Continue’ (it turns out you can continue without selecting a tip amount, but it’s not immediately clear to the user). 

I’ll confess, when I was first presented with this I was mildly irked: I usually tip if I’ve had table service, but waiting staff are treated as professionals and paid properly, guaranteed by deals with unions; menu prices are correspondingly high. The tip was a genuine token of appreciation.

But when I tweeted something to this effect (a tweet that went strangely viral), the responses I got made me think. Many people pointed out that the restaurant trade in Sweden is under enormous pressure, with rising costs, the after-effects of Covid and difficulties recruiting. And as Sweden has become more cosmopolitain, adding ten percent to the bill comes naturally to many.

Boulebar, a restaurant and bar chain with branches around Sweden and Denmark, had a longstanding policy of not accepting tips at all, reasoning that they were outdated and put diners in an uncomfortable position. But in 2021 CEO Henrik Kruse decided to change tack:

“It was a purely financial decision. We were under pressure due to Covid, and we had to keep wages down, so bringing back tips was the solution,” he said, adding that he has a collective agreement and staff also get a union bargained salary, before tips.

Yet for Kruse the new machines, with their pre-set tipping percentages, take things too far:

“We don’t use it, because it makes it even clearer that you’re asking for money. The guest should feel free not to tip. It’s more important for us that the guest feels free to tell people they’re satisfied.”

But for those restaurants that have adopted the new interfaces, the effect has been dramatic. Card processing company Kassacentralen, which was one of the first to launch this feature in Sweden, told Svenska Dagbladet this week that the feature had led to tips for the average establishment doubling, with some places seeing them rise six-fold.

Even unions are relaxed about tipping these days, perhaps understanding that they’re a significant extra income for their members. Union representatives have often in the past spoken out against tipping, arguing that the practice is demeaning to staff and that tips were spread unevenly, with staff in cafés or fast food joints getting nothing at all. But when I called the Swedish Hotel and Restaurant Union (HRF), a spokesman said that the union had no view on the practice, and it was a matter for staff, business owners and customers to decide.

So is tipping now expected in Sweden? The old advice probably still stands; waiters are still not as reliant on tips as staff in many other countries, so a lavish tip is not necessary. But as Swedes start to tip more generously, you might stick out if you leave nothing at all.

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