Oslo: Opera, Vikings, and Spiced Honey Cake
image from lonelyplanet.com
Oslo, the capital of Norway, sits on the country's southern coastline. It is a city of rolling hills and beautiful water views. I walked along the water front at dusk and passed the beautiful opera house.
Oslo Opera house
For dinner, I went to Engebret Cafe, the oldest restaurant in Oslo, where I ordered this as my appetizer:
A taste of northern Norway with gratinéed king crab, smoked musk whale carpaccio, salmon tartare, marinated herring, smoked cod, shrimps, arctic caviar, and reindeer carpaccio
I will admit that I was worried about whether I would like eating musk whale or reindeer, but I enjoyed everything on the plate except the pickled herring.
Norwegian sampler
One of the oddities of Oslo is the bad attitude of the Norwegian who work in service jobs. My friend who lives near Oslo told me that he knows people who will only go to restaurants where the waitstaff are not from Norway because they are nicer to patrons than if they were Norwegian. I did have one nice bus driver, but I also had one actually snarl at me.
symbol of the city of Oslo on the manhole covers
It started to rain as I took a boat to the Bygdøy peninsula to go to the Vikingskipshuset (Viking Ship Museum) where they have many Viking ships and the items found on or with the ships like beautiful ivory carvings and wooden chests. I also planned to go to the Norwegian Museum of Cultural History (Folkemuseet), which is one of Europe's largest open-air museums, with 155 traditional houses from all parts of Norway, but I skipped it because the rain had become torrential.
carving on a Viking ship
Returning home, I wanted to recreated the delicious spiced honey cake that I enjoyed at a coffee shop in Oslo.
spiced honey cake with dark chocolate ganache icing
You can serve this fragrant cake plain or glazed with dark chocolate and sprinkled with flaked almonds. It is called Honningkake in Norwegian.
prep and cooking time: 1 hour
makes: 8 pieces
Ingredients:
- butter, to grease the pan
- breadcrumbs, to coat the pan
- 4 eggs, yolks and white separated
- 250 g/9 oz (1-1/4 cups) sugar
- 250 g/9 oz (1 cup plus 2 tablespoons) honey
- 100 g/3-1/2 oz (7 tablespoons) butter, melted and cooled
- 1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
- 1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
- 1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
- 250 g/9 oz (2 cups plus 1 tablespoon) weak (soft) wheat flour
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- pinch of salt
Directions:
- Preheat the oven to 150 C/300 F. Butter a 21 x 11 x 6 cm/8-1/2 x 4-1/2 x 2-1/2” loaf pan and coat with breadcrumbs.
- Whisk the egg yolks and sugar in a bowl until pale and creamy. Add the honey, melted butter, and spices to the egg mixture. Sift the dry ingredients together in a bowl and mix in thoroughly.
- Whisk the egg whites to soft peaks, then fold them into the cake batter. Scrape the batter into the prepared loaf pan and smooth the surface.
- Bake the cake for about 50 minutes, or until golden and cooked through. Turn the cake out of the loaf pan and leave to cool on a wire rack.
- Optionally, ice the cake once it is cool.
