My Favorite Kladdkaka (Swedish Fudgy Chocolate Cake)

Life is full of reasons to celebrate, I’m convinced of that. It’s so easy to get caught up in the movement and the swiftness of the everyday. Sometimes—as a friend put it the other day—the monotony. But I’m trying to slow down, to protect the white spaces in my schedule, to factor in time to train myself to notice.

The brush strokes in the blue-yellow autumn sunset. An efficient spider building its tightrope home outside the dining room window. The stunning transformations as summer unfolds with sunflowers and berries for a while before giving way to pumpkins and cascades of fiery leaves. Nature itself is enough to awaken awe. Even more so are our friends.

As I watch my children form their first friendships, I’m reminded of the value of my own. I don’t take any of them for granted. It’s hard to write about friendship without sounding trite, but there’s rejuvenation and refreshment to be found in a heart-to-heart conversation with someone who accepts and loves you for who you are. (Sarah, that’s you.) There’s support and nourishment, too, from the dear ones who provide a steady flow of hot meals in the weeks after a baby is born. (Too many of you to list!) There are the prayers, the notes sent handwritten and stamped, the phone calls to wish a happy birthday in the time of social media’s rapid, generic greetings.

This kladdkaka, then, is for all of my friends.

I’ll always associate this Swedish chocolate cake with Rachel, for whom I baked it in the depths of winter this past year. It was a week of recipe development for me, and I made the chocolate cake four times. The one that turned out the best was the one I brought to Rachel’s house when she hosted us for dinner. I was uncertain whether I had baked it long enough or how it was going to turn out. But I was confident enough in our friendship to know that I didn’t have to stress about perfection. I knew that Rachel is an eager cook, like me, who likes to experiment in the kitchen. She’d either celebrate or commiserate. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: When you bake with love, that’s when things turn out just right, when things become beautiful.

After dinner, when the cake—which had still been hot from the oven when I left my house earlier that evening—had cooled and set, we dug in. The knife slid in with ease and I pulled out a thin wedge baked just right, the chocolate still glistening with kladdkaka’s signature sheen but sturdy enough to transfer to a plate.

The beauty of this cake is its underbaked perfection. Similar to flourless chocolate cakes and molten “lava” cakes, it’s both dense and gooey inside. But it retains a light quality, too, in contrast to flourless cakes. I’ve heard it likened to brownies, but I don’t agree with that comparison; if kladdkaka resembles those, then it’s overbaked.

Kladdkaka—often translated to gooey chocolate cake—is the most searched-for recipes online in Sweden, as I learned from Magnus Nilsson, two star chef of Sweden’s celebrated restaurant Fäviken, when he spoke at the Nordic Culinary Conference in Seattle last spring. The origins go back only as far as the 1970s, yet it’s become a national favorite. I can see why.

The cake in its simplest form only requires a handful of ingredients. The technique is rather simple too. By and large, kladdkaka recipes call for cocoa powder, but I’m pretty sure that once you’ve tried it this way, with bars of bittersweet chocolate, you won’t be going back. I started making the cake this way a few years ago, following a recipe in Signe Johansen’s mouthwatering book, Secrets of Scandinavian Cooking… Scandilicious. While I’ve given cocoa powder a try once since, I just can’t break away from the incredibly moist and silky results of a good quality chocolate bar. Signe’s approach is definitely a winner (she adds whiskey to her Bergen fish soup, too, which sounds daring until you taste it and realize that it respectfully transforms the traditional soup). I played with the recipe, switching things up a bit each time, until I came to my ultimate kladdkaka recipe. While this one now bears only an echo of hers, Signe is a master of Scandinavian baking, and I’d like to believe she’d give her stamp of approval.

The ease of this cake makes it perfect for celebrations of all kinds. I’ve served it at book club, and at a dear friend’s bridal shower. It comes together quickly and requires less than 15 minutes to bake. Plus, it has a reputation for freezing well.

As I’m trying to live life looking for things to celebrate, I’m glad to have this cake recipe in my repertoire. I’m sure you will be too.

Kladdkaka (Swedish Fudgy Chocolate Cake)
The magic in this cake is in the timing. There’s no real way to guarantee that your timing is perfect until the cake has cooled and you’ve gone ahead and cut yourself a slice, as I did when I brought it to Rachel’s home last winter. Go for the 14 minutes indicated the first time around. Make a note if you need to give it a minute or two more or less the next time. When you know how much time it needs in your particular oven, you’ll have a deceptively easy cake recipe that’s bound to become a favorite.

8 ounces bittersweet chocolate (I used 60% cacao)
2 sticks unsalted butter
1 teaspoon instant espresso powder
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
4 large eggs
1 cup sugar
2 ¼ cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
Powdered sugar, for dusting

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees F. Grease a 9-inch springform pan.

Roughly chop the chocolate, using either a sharp knife or a food processor.

In a deep saucepan, 3-quart or larger, melt the butter over medium heat. Remove from heat and add the chocolate, stirring until melted. Stir in the espresso powder and vanilla extract. Set aside to cool to lukewarm.

In a large mixing bowl, beat the eggs and sugar until frothy, then stir in the melted chocolate and butter. In another bowl, give the flour and baking powder a quick whisk to combine, then gently fold in to the batter until incorporated. Pour into the prepared pan and bake for 14 minutes. Cool in the pan on a wire rack. Remove from pan and dust with powdered sugar. Serve with mounds of sweetened whipped cream and fresh berries or a generous scoop of vanilla ice cream.

Serves 12.

Find even more sweet and savory treats in my cookbook Modern Scandinavian Baking!