Happy Norway Day!

Monday 17th May was Norway's National Day when the country celebrates the adoption of its constitution in 1814. For more information on how its celebrated and what it's all about click here: http://www.norway.org/ARCHIVE/culture/heritage/nationalday/

To celebrate the national day of our favourite holiday destination we held our own celebrations yesterday. This included eating a breakfast of bacon, scrambled eggs and chocolate spread covered bread (what we had for breakfast in our Oslo hotel in January), a dinner of hot dogs (what we ate for lunch in Oslo) and watching Norwegian clips and listening to some Norwegian music (a once a year experience, I think!). But, the centrepiece of our celebrations was our Norway Day cake. It was a basic Victoria sandwich, covered with cream cheese icing and strawberries and blueberries in the shape of the Norwegian flag (sort of). The cake is a sainsbury's recipe and the icing is from All Cakes Considered (p43).

Ingredients:
175g margarine
175g caster sugar
3 medium eggs, beaten
175g self raising flour
strawberry jam

55g  butter
112g cream cheese
1 teaspoons vanilla extract
225-250g icing sugar

For the cake:
Preheat oven to 180°C, fan 160°C, gas 4. Grease and line two 20.5cm sandwich tins.


Place the margarine and sugar in a mixing bowl and cream together until light and fluffy. Beat in the eggs one at a time, adding a tablespoon of flour with the second egg. Add the remaining flour and beat well.Divide the mixture equally between the prepared sandwich tins. 


Bake in the preheated oven for 20-25 minutes until the cake has risen and springs back to the touch. Cool on a wire rack. Sandwich together with strawberry jam.


For the icing:


Cream together unsalted butter (at room temperature) and cream cheese. Add 2 teaspoons of vanilla extract. 


Gradually add the icing sugar and beat until smooth. If your icing isn't stiff enough you can add more icing sugar, or if it's too stiff add some more butter. 


Spread the icing over the whole cake and place in the fridge for ten minutes.


Bring out of the fridge and decorate with chopped strawberries and whole blueberries. Put back in the fridge for 30 minutes before eating.


Due to the fresh fruit and the dairy content this cake can only keep for a couple of days so make sure you have plenty of friends on hand to help you consume it!