We will return to our regular programming soon!

I promise!  Between encountering numerous technical difficulties and being absolutely, completely, and utterly swamped at my day job, regular posts this week have sort of fallen by the wayside.  But don't fret--Valentine's Day, aka one of the biggest dessert holidays of the year, is coming up, and I have lots of sweet stuff to share that I'm very excited about.  For example, this:

Mmm... so stay tuned!

A Finnish February: the Runeberg Cake (aka: Runebergintorttuja)

Happy February!  I always breathe a sigh of relief when February rolls around because we've officially survived the grey month of January and can has holidays again! (yes, grammatical error intended.... I can has weird grammar?)  I know that many of you out there object to Valentine's Day as a Hallmark-invented, consumerist holiday, but I adore it, because it's just one more excuse to make more yummy-licious desserts.  *grin*  But, before we get onto the topic of Valentine's Day here on the blog, I first want to introduce you all to another February holiday dessert:

Runeberg Cakes!

(or more accurately: Runebergintorttuja)

Rune..what?  Okay, I admit it.  These are not American desserts, but Finnish-Swedish ones.  They are named after the Finnish national poet, Johan Ludvig Runeberg, who apparently was especially fond of these cakes (no idea what they were called prior to being graced by Runeberg's fondness), and are traditionally consumed on February 5th, Runeberg's birthday.

Now, why in the world--you are indeed thinking--is this native Californian, Asian-American girl making a Finnish dessert?  Well, first of all, they are good.  But I didn't discover that until after I'd made these.  Nope. Here's the actual reason:

We have something of a Finnish invasion force in my department.  Both my main advisor and one of my secondary advisors are Finnish.  Now, to me, that's a lot of Finns in one place.  They're even teaming up with another Finnish professor in the Computer Science department this quarter to teach a whole class all about Finnish.  So, we hear a lot about Finnish where I am.

Of course, being the curious academic, I once asked my advisors about desserts that they missed from their native countries (naturally, because I talk about dessert way more than I talk about my day job), and my advisor told me about Runeberg cakes.  This was two to three years ago that we had that conversation.  Finally, when my advisor's birthday rolled around this year, I had an excuse to try my hand at these intriguing-sounding cakes.  They were even more fitting for the occasion because my advisor studies poetics, so why not make a cake named after his country's national poet for his birthday, which is incidentally right around the same time as February fifth?

So I did my research, reading up all about Runeberg cakes that I could find.  I even attempted some Finnish websites, but gave up very, very, very quickly.  (Despite being around Finns all the time, my Finnish knowledge is still nonexistent.)  I amassed a bunch of varying Runeberg cake recipes and studied all of them. Finally, I set out to make my own, keeping what I thought were the most important features of the cakes and then adding and adjusting things based on my own baker's intuition (or, however much baker's intuition I fancy myself to have).

This was the result: a super dense, super moist, super robust tower of individually-portioned cake, packed full of almond, ginger, and orange-y goodness, then topped with a thick and barely-tart raspberry reduction, a dash of lemon juice, and held in by a ring of sweet icing, with just the faintest hint of almond.  And boy, it was YUM.  But would it pass the true Finnish test?

Hell yes!  My advisor was so excited when he saw these that he would stop lecturing to take bites of the cake sitting in front of him.  The ultimate compliment then came when he said to me:

"You should go open a bakery... in Helsinki!"

Ohhhhh yeahhhhhhhhhhh. *grin.*



Read on for the recipe...
(I really hope you try these--according to the Finns, I hit the nail right on the head!)