Lingonberry Lebkuchen Festive Cake

Recipe From What's For Lunch, Honey?

By Meeta K. Wolff

Prep Time: 30 minutes

Total Time: 60 minutes

Serves: 10

Ingredients

• 175 g butter, melted and cooled

• 3 eggs

• 100 g soft brown sugar

• 150g fine granulated suger

• 300 g cake flour (alternatively all-purpose flour)

• 2 teaspoons baking powder

• 3 teaspoons Lebkuchen spice mix (Make the mix)

• 1/2 teaspoon ground cardamom

• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

• pinch of salt

• 220 ml almond milk

For the icing

• 175 g butter, softened

• 400 g icing sugar

• 70 g lingonberries (50 g for frosting + 20g for decorating), defrosted

• 180 g cream cheese

• handful pistachios, chopped

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees C. Prepare 3 18-cm round cake pans by greasing them and lining them with baking paper.

2. Beat the eggs with both sugars until the mixture is light, fluffly and almost doubled in volume. Use a stand mixer with a ballon whisk or alternatively a hand-held electric whisk.

3. Sift together the dry ingredients in a separate bowl, then fold gently into the egg mixture. Pour the melted (cooled) butter and the whole milk and with the speed on low incoporate slowly.

4. Divide the mixture between the three prepared pans and bake in the oven for approx. 15 to 20 minutes or until the cake is beautifully golden, well-risen and springy to the touch. Test by inserting a skewer into the middle of the cake, if it comes out clean it's ready! Turn the cakes out on a wire rack and allow to cool completely.

5. In the meantime make the icing by beating on high speed the butter, cream cheese and icing sugar using the paddle attachment on your stand mixer or the hand-held whisk. If there is a lot of liquid from the defrosted lingonberries, make sure you drain most of it, reserving a little bit for the icing. Add the lingonberries and gently fold into the icing, then add some of the reserved lingonberry juice to give the desired pink color to the icing.

6. Assembling the cake from here is easy. Divide the icing into three parts. Place a sponge layer on your cakestand and spread over with a layer of icing. Repeat the process with the remaining layers. Spread a generous icing layer on your final cake layer, then scatter with the remaining lingonberries reserved for the decoration. Sprinkle with the chopped pistachios.

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