Tosca cake

I was going to say this cake is from my native Finland, but like with many things, it’s very difficult to say whether something originated from Finland, Sweden or Norway (each country would always like to claim the ownership, take sauna for example), so I’ll expand a little bit and say this is Nordic baking.

200g butter
2 dl sugar
3 eggs (large)
4 dl flour (I use half plain, half self raising)
2 tsp baking powder
2 tsp vanilla sugar
1/2 lemon skin, grated
~~~~~
75g butter
3/4 dl sugar
1 1/2 tbsp flour
2 tbsp milk
70g almond flakes

1. Heat oven to 175°C / 345°F.

2. Whisk butter and sugar together, until light fluffy texture. You may find this easier if the butter has been sitting in the room temperature for a while prior to this, and is soft. Add eggs one at a time, whisking as you go. If you find it difficult to incorporate the eggs to the butter/sugar mixture, you might want to add a small spoonful of the flour as you go.

3. Mix all dry ingredients of flour, baking powder, vanilla sugar and lemon skin together. Add to the butter, sugar and egg mixture, and mix together. Keep in mind that you should not be mixing it vigorously or for a long time after adding the flour, as this will make your cake to fail.

4. Pour the mixture to your cake tin. I these days use silicon ones, so I don’t need to butter them, but if you are using the older style tins, you would like to butter them, and then add some fine breadcrumbs until all of the inside of the tin is covered. This will prevent the cake from sticking to the tin. Bake on the lowest shelf of the oven for 20 minutes.

5. Whilst the cake is cooking, add all remaining ingredients of butter, sugar, flour, milk and almond flakes to a pan, to make the topping. Heat, and stir everything together until sugar has melted and all ingredients are mixed together.