Totte Cake
Published on 6 June 2024 by Andrew Owen (1 minutes)
In the 1960s, Gunilla Wolde wrote a series of books about a little boy called Totte (translated to English as Thomas). They included one called “Thomas bakes a cake”. Despite having owned this book since 1977, it took me over 40 years to notice the recipe on the back. Of course it wasn’t in metric. I found a reprint of the original Swedish version from 2014, but the recipe was missing. Perhaps it was added by the English publisher. Or perhpas the Swedish publisher removed it from the reprint for health and safety reasons. Here’s the original recipe:
I consulted some modern sponge cake recipes. They typically call for two medium eggs and equal quantities of sugar, flour and butter. Among my assumptions is that the cups must be US (125 g) rather than UK (150 g). The result is a cake that’s a bit denser than a modern sponge.