Midsummers! Strawberry Cream Cake

Midsummers is the celebration we swedes celebrate as our national day. Yes our national day is on June 6th, but this is the day we all love and enjoy the most. People go and see the tradidional maypole, dance around it singing old songs about "The Small Frogs" and other great tunes.
We truly come alive on Midsummers, we love our country, our traditions, the weather and the people around us. This is the day the swedes act unswedish.

My fiancé Andrew & sis-in-law Emily

This Midsummer was also my sister in laws first ever, seeing as she and my finacé are from Australia she had never celebrated midsummers before. The day started at home, we got all our food ready. Marinated the soyfillets and mushrooms, made the cake, packed all the things we would need for the day and left to go to my parents house. There me and my sister in law picked birch tree branches and flowers to make ourselves a traditional hair-wreath (a krans), to keep in our hair all day. Then we all left for a traditional Midsummer celebration with tons of other celebrating people, we saw the maypole getting decorated and raised, the old music played by a man on a accordion and sung by another, people dancing with their families and more people having picknics on blankets in the grass. This is true swedish summer! 


We also looked at the old house on the homestead/ folk museum and after that went to my aunt and uncles summer house for a nice midsummers with the family. There we had some fika, cooked a nice bbq dinner and had the strawberry cream cake for dessert. Leaving us all feeling very full. 

After the cake me and my sister in law went to the forrest so she could pick herself seven different varieties of wild flowers. There is this old swedish tradition, that if a single woman picks seven flowers and then sleeps with them under her pillow, she will dream of the man she is to marry. So that is what we did. After the flower picking we were on our way home. On the drive home the people in the car screams I have to stop, there was a moose in the forest next to us. My sister in law was on cloud 9, she has been wanting to see a moose for a while and there it was. Standing still just a few meters away, just staring at us and then turning around and running further into the woods until he wasn't visible any longer.

Moose

So the recipe from this midsummers is Strawberry Cream Cake, YUM!


You Will Need:


For the sponge base (for a tall cake bake two batches of this):

• 50-75 grams (≈ 0.5 stick of margarine/ 5 1/4 tbs) Dairy Free Margarine (melted)
• Egg Replacer (I use Orgran "No Egg") equal to 2-3 eggs
• 2 dl (0.8 cup) White Sugar
• 3 dl (1 1/4 cups) Plain Flour
• 3 tsp Baking Powder
• 2 tsp Vanilla Powder (or essence)
• 1 dl (0.4 cup) Vegan Milk or Water

1. Start with baking the sponge base by mixing all the dry ingredients in a bowl and then adding the melted margarine, milk or water and the egg replacer (mixed according to the packet). Mix with a beater until smooth.
2. Grease and bread crumb a round baking tin. Pour in the batter.
3. Bake the cake at 200C / 390F for 40-50min in the lower part of the oven. Leave to completely cool down, over night or from morning to night is good.

Filling/ Topping:

• 4-5 servings of Vegan Vanilla Custard (I use a powder/cooking one called Ekströms "Marsán" and mix with vegan milk option)
• 2-3 ripe Bananas
• 2-3 boxes of Vegan Whip Cream (I use GoGreen "Visp") Mixed with a sprinkle of vanilla powder and sugar.
• Lots of Strawberries

1. If you are using the cooking custard make it and leave it to completely cool down before using.
2. Cut the cake so you have three layers of sponge.
3. On one layer you spread half of the custard  and top with sliced banana.
4. Place another sponge layer and then top that with the rest of the custard and either sliced or mashed up strawberries.
5. Place the lid layer and cover the entire cake with a good layer of cream. The cream is best whipped cold from the fridge. (If the cake isn't to be eaten right away store it un decorated in the fridge)
6. Then decorate the top with strawberries. You can dust with icing sugar if desired, but remember to decorate the cake just before serving it. If not the strawberries can bleed and make the white whip cream around the strawberries pink.

Our hair-wreaths 

3x4 leaf clovers