Prinsesstårta

The prinsesstårta, in a way, is what started me on this journey of baking through the Bake Off. I remember watching this episode for the first time and being mesmerized by the prinsesstårta. Never having seen one before, I was enchanted by the pastel green marzipan covering delicate layers of sponge, jam and cream. The single pink rose and swirls of chocolate on top made it truly look like a cake fit for a princess.

I set out to make it then, but not being confident in my skills, I decided to make miniature ones instead. Accomplishing that small feat boosted my confidence enough to think that maybe, just maybe, I could attempt all the other challenges set before the bakers in the Great White Tent. … And a blog was born.

The prinsesstårta is a modern Swedish classic. Although it first appeared in a 1948 cookbook under the name grön tårta (green cake), it has royal roots. The woman who wrote the cookbook, Jenny Åkerström, taught cooking and other domestic skills to the three daughters of Prince Carl, brother to King Gustav V of Sweden. Apparently she had a close relationship with the three princesses, since her cookbooks — she published a series of four, beginning in 1929 — were titled Princesses Cookbook: Home Cooking and Holiday Food and featured their likenesses on the cover. It’s the third book in this series that contains the recipe for “green cake.”

From there it’s difficult to know why the name was changed, except that this particular green cake was reported to be a favorite of Princesses Margaretha, Märtha and Astrid. And its popularity has only grown since then — so much so that the fourth week of September is now known as Princess Cake Week, when, for every prinsesstårta sold in Sweden, 10 Krona are donated to the Crown Princess Victoria’s Fund, supporting children and young people with disabilities and chronic illness. Overall, around 500,000 prinsesstårta are sold in Sweden every year.

So how does one make a prinsesstårta? There are variations, but generally it consists of eight or nine layers: a sponge base topped with raspberry jam, then a layer of custard (or, in Mary Berry’s recipe, diplomat cream) topped with another layer of sponge, followed by another layer of custard (or diplomat cream), another sponge and a mound of whipped cream, all covered in green marzipan. Some recipes put the mound of whipped cream on top of the second layer of custard so that the final sponge layer is molded over the cream before the marzipan is added. That might serve to make the cake more stable, which is a problem I ran into. But more about that later.

As we are now coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic and my friends and I are fully vaccinated, I planned to take my prinsesstårta to a small brunch party. I wanted to get as much of the prep work as possible done the day before, so I started with the decoration — the fondant rose. This may have been the easiest element as well, since Mary’s recipe calls for ready-made fondant. All I had to do was color it pink and shape it into a rose. Mary’s instructions are pretty easy to follow, but if you’re more of a visual learner, you can follow this tutorial.

The next step was to make the jam. This is also fairly easy, but it helps if you have a candy thermometer so you’ll know when your fruit reaches the jelly stage (220°F). Mary’s recipe calls for jam sugar, which is hard to find in the U.S. It’s basically sugar with pectin already in it, so I looked at the recipes in my box of Sure-Jell pectin and used the amount it called for based on the amount of sugar in Mary’s recipe. In this case, I used 1¼ teaspoons of pectin to a little over 1 cup of sugar.

After that I made the custard, which is also pretty straightforward: Bring the milk and a vanilla bean to a simmer while whisking together egg yolks, sugar and cornstarch. Slowly pour the warm milk into the egg mixture while continuing to whisk (I use an electric mixer.), then pour it all back into the pan and whisk by hand over low heat until it thickens. Cover it with plastic wrap to prevent a skin from forming and leave it to cool. This can be made up to three days in advance and stored in the fridge.

For the sponge, I simply whisked the eggs and sugar together until they reached ribbon stage, then sifted the dry ingredients over the egg mixture and folded it in gently, trying to keep as much air in the batter as possible. After folding in the melted butter, I poured the mixture into a parchment-lined springform pan and baked it for about 25 minutes.

The idea then was to slice the cooled cake into three even layers. I was worried about this step because my cake had sunk a bit in the middle — I’m not sure why, possibly because I used a 10-inch pan instead of the 9-inch pan the recipe calls for — so knowing it would be easier to slice when frozen, I stuck it in the freezer overnight.

The final element was the marzipan. Mary’s recipe calls for 2 whole eggs, but because the eggs wouldn’t be cooked, I opted to use the equivalent volume of pasteurized egg whites. (Pasteurized whole eggs are not readily available in the U.S.) I did a little digging and discovered that marzipan can be made in a number of different ways. Some use whole eggs, or just yolks, or just whites, or no eggs at all. I wanted to remain as close to Mary’s recipe as possible, though, so I just switched to egg whites.

With all of my elements completed except the whipped cream, I waited until the morning of the brunch to assemble my prinsesstårta. I couldn’t find any advice on the internet about how to store the assembled cake or how long it would keep, and fearing that if I put it together too soon the whipped cream would deflate, I kept everything chilled until the next day.

The next morning, I was able to cut the frozen cake into three layers, although the topmost layer was micro-thin in the middle. I spread a thin layer of custard over the bottom layer, then piped a ring of custard around the outside, filling the center with jam. Then I whipped the cream (adding a little corn starch and powdered sugar for stability) and folded half of it into the remaining custard to make the diplomat cream. I spread a layer of that over the jam, followed by the second cake layer, which I then topped with another layer of diplomat cream. The third cake layer was next, on top of which I piled a mound of whipped cream and then covered the whole cake with a thin layer of whipped cream to act as a crumb coat.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

Did I mention we were having a heat wave? By this time, my layers were beginning to slide off of one another. The recipe said to refrigerate it for an hour, but I was running out of time, so I popped it in the freezer instead. This felt like a real Great British Bake Off moment!

I rolled out the marzipan and covered it with plastic wrap to keep it from drying out while the cake chilled. Although my marzipan was perfectly smooth when I rolled it over my rolling pin to transfer it to the cake, it formed cracks and wrinkles during the transfer process, so half of my cake was smooth and the other half was cracked. Thinking quickly, I cut a bunch of leaf shapes out of the excess marzipan I had cut off around the bottom of the cake and used those to cover the cracks and wrinkles. I then piped a chocolate vine connecting the leaves to one another and, ultimately, the fondant rose. 

I was pretty satisfied with the way it turned out (see “before” picture), but I knew I had to act fast to photograph it before taking it to the brunch. I then packed it into a cooler with lots of ice packs and crossed my fingers as I drove through a bunch of road construction to my friend’s house. Unfortunately, by the time I got there, my prinsesstårta had pretty much collapsed (see “after” picture).

After serving the somewhat melted cake in bowls, I popped the rest in the freezer. By the next day, I was able to cut into the half that hadn’t completely collapsed in order to get pictures of the layers (see below). All in all, though, it still tasted good, and I was able to share the frozen leftovers with neighbors.

On the bright side, I learned from experience — after the fact — that you can, indeed, freeze the assembled prinsesstårta. My advice is to leave it in the freezer until an hour or so before serving, then transfer it to the fridge to thaw. This will keep the marzipan from sweating too much. My takeaway from all this? While I might tackle it again, I find making cupcake-sized prinsesstårtor easier (see photo below). That will be a blog post for another day, but I followed the directions found on this website.

Here is a link to Mary’s recipe, but I have adapted it for American bakers below. For a helpful video on how to assemble the prinsesstårta and cover it with marzipan, watch this. (It’s in Swedish, but you really don’t need to understand the words, although I find her voice very soothing!)

Next week: Dobos Torte