Finnish Tiger cake - my great grandmother's recipe

My Kichwa daughter, Celia, asked me to teach her to bake a cake.

She had never baked one herself and wanted to know how it was done.

The first cake ever my mom taught me to do was a marbled chocolate and vanilla cake we call “tiger cake” in Finland.

The name comes from the black and white, or yellowy and brown, stripes that the cake has.

 

Mixing the sugar with the eggs.

It is also the cake my son has been begging me to do because he really likes it and we haven’t had it for a while.

The cake isn’t difficult to do.

You have to mix the softened margarine or butter with half of the sugar in one bowl, until it’s foamy.

In another bowl you mix the dry ingredients, or flour and baking powder.

And yet in another bowl, you mix the eggs with the rest of the sugar.

After the eggs are beaten into beautiful white foam, you need to add the dry ingredients and some milk.

Beat them together and add the margarine mix and at last, a swirl of vanilla essence.

When everything is mixed well, take a half, or a third, of the mix.

The amount depends on how much chocolaty stripes you want in your cake.

Mix this half with chocolate powder.

In a well-buttered pan that is covered with bread crumbs, I use the ones they sell in the bakeries that has really tiny crumbs, pour the white mix.

After you have poured the white mix, cover it with the chocolate mix.

Then you need to take a ladle or a spoon, a fork is OK too, and stick it in the mix.

Swooping around with the laddle.

 Swoop it around a bit and then rise it up.

Repeat this few times but be careful not to mix the two colors totally.

You just want to get some stripes on that tiger.

After the cake was baked and waiting to cool off, I had to leave to a work meeting.

I asked my son to look after the cake so that the dogs or the ants wouldn’t get into it.

 

This is what was left of the cake when I came home.

Well, that was what was waiting for me when I got home; I think the picture is worth more than thousand words this time.

 My son had two friends over and he had decided to serve them cake and since he was worried about cutting himself with the knife.

Or that’s what he told me afterwards, he just grabbed the cake with his hands.

Let’s say that I was a bit annoyed and I told him that he owned me a cake because I wasn’t going to eat that one.

Or give any of it to Celia so she could try it out.

The cake before my son decided to take a bite.

 The good thing is that we actually had fun with my son when I taught him how to make the cake.

He’s ten now, the same age I was when my mom taught me to do the tiger cake.

So I was happy to be able to continue the tradition.

This cake recipe is actually from my great-grandmother and it has been in her family even before it.

Hope you will enjoy it also.

 

Eating the batter, best part of baking a cake.

You’ll need:

4 eggs

4 dl sugar

250 grams of margarine or butter (originally calls for butter)

6 dl wheat flour

1 table spoon of baking powder

1 dl of milk

1 table spoon of vanilla essence

1 dl of chocolate powder

1. Mix the margarine with half of the sugar until it’s foamy.

2. Mix the flour with the baking powder.

3. Mix the other half of the sugar with the eggs until white foam forms.

4. Mix the dry ingredients with the egg foam, add milk.

5. Mix carefully the margarine with the rest of the batter.

6. Add vanilla essence.

7. Remove half (or third) of the mix and add the chocolate powder.

8. Pour the white mix into a well-buttered pan.

9. Mix the two batters to form stripes.

10. Bake in 175 Celsius for an hour.

Enjoy!

If you want to know more about my Kichwa daughter you can read a post here.