Classic Classless Cake
Classic Classless Cake
This is not the story of a girl stealing apples from the neighbour’s garden. This is the story about Karl Marx, John Locke and a tasty apple cake.
Journalist: Laura Wanvik
Translator: Eva Weston Szemes
Photographer: Jørgen Berg Yndestad
Alienation gets us all from time to time, but the autumn is an especially disconnected era in my opinion. The decline of nature and the fact that I never manage to dress appropriately for the weather reminds me of my own mortality and the many limits of the world society. The sun’s warmth leaves a cold in our body that refuses to go away, even with the ungodly amount of hot chocolate we chug in Klubben. During difficult times, I turn to the man whose beard is not in the mailbox, the Father Christmas of the left wing: Karl Marx.
Karl’s best tip to counteract nauseating alienation is to make something comprehensive with your hands and then not sell it to anyone! Self-realisation through creation should supposedly strengthen your feeling of belonging in this reality, if no factory owner steals your creation. My hunger for an existential anchor made me realise what Marx was commanding. I had to bake a cake and do so quickly. You didn’t think autumn is the baking season because we think it’s nice, did you?
But Marx also emphasises that profit is theft, and Odd Reitan had already had more than his share of my bank account during my weekly shop the day before. I therefore needed to get back to reality for as cheap as possible. But how? On my way home to Skogveien, the answer hit me like lightning from a rain-heavy sky: Stealing apples from a garden.
As a citizen of Ås, it is difficult to miss the very low-hanging fruit growing on the trees along our many small country roads, and even more difficult to not get tempted to borrow a few of them. Gerhardsen said that: “Nobody should get cake before everyone has bread”, but with today’s food prices, stolen apples seem like a safer bet. Let them eat cake, I say, and pay wealth tax at the same time. Hi hi.
What even is private ownership anyway, if not an attempt to alienate me even more from what’s really important in life? This bloody product fetishism is making us value property borders more than a cake night with the collective, and I don’t like it! In socialist times of crisis, I turn to another wise man, a kind of left-wing Sindre Finnes – namely John Locke. According to him, you get the right to ownership by cultivating objects through your work. Picking, peeling and baking are exquisite forms of cultivation if you ask me. And think about all the social work I can do with the energy from these cultivated apples! A cake night with friends can save lives, and sweet tooth is no joke! Especially not during these already difficult autumn circumstances. When taking that into account, it would be unsocial of me to not steal the apples.
My sense of duty sent me on a journey to find the first and best apple tree. The time I spent around the apples gave me some time to reflect on this round fruit’s ambiguous nature. In Norse mythology, the gods ate Idunn’s golden apples to stay young, while Snow White took a single bite of an apple and then took a 100-year long nap. Adam and Eve stole an apple, and we all know how that story ended. Luckily, nobody was thrown out of this garden before I had helped myself to a few humble kilos.
I then continued my journey towards freedom from the alienation, and I can confirm that Marx’ miracle medicine has bore fruit! The result of my baking work contributed to keeping my physical existence going, and as a physical creature I reaped the goods from my own production. The leftovers were split between me and my room mates; we were both proletariat and middle class. A circular economy wonder! One rotten apple might ruin the whole bunch, but give us some tasty, free ones in an eight-person collective, and you get a red, green and beautiful Norway! This way, I give you the recipe for a classic, classless cake – easy to use for everyone no matter if you vote for parties with or without apples in the logo.
Bon Appetit, and good luck in autumn, comerades! <3
Li Li’s apple cake
TT-Cakebaker: Li Li Than Winn
Ingredients
The apples
4-5 medium sized apples or 10 small Norwegian apples (tart)
Lemon juice
On top
2 tbsp cinnamon
2-3 tbsp brown sugar
The batter
200 g butter (soft/room temperature)
200 g sugar
4 eggs
170 g wheat flour/ gluten free flour
1 tsp baking powder
2 tsp vanilla sugar
1 tsp cardamom
2 tsp cinnamon
¼ tsp salt
What to do
Step 1: The apples
Peel the apples and cut them in slices of medium thickness and soak them in cold water with a bit of lemon juice. Maybe the juice of half a lemon.
Step 2: The base
Whip the butter and sugar until it’s fluffy and lighter in colour than when you started. It’s nice to use a hand mixer for this. Use a spatula periodically to scrape down the butter from the side of the bowl.
Add one egg at a time to the mixture of sugar and butter. Each egg should be properly mixed by whipping before adding the next egg. Don’t worry too much if the batter splits slightly. This can happen if the eggs are cold, but it does not make much of a difference.
Preheat the oven to 180 °C and put the baking tray on the middle rack in the oven.
Step 3: Mix the dry ingredients with the wet ones.
In a completely different bowl, mix flour, baking powder, vanilla sugar, cinnamon, cardamom and a little salt. Stir it a bit, then add it to the butter mixture from the previous step and mix well.
Step 4: Construct the cake
Add baking paper to a round cake tin with a diameter of 28 cm. (You can also use a small sheet pan). Find a colander and strain the water from the apples.
Put some cake batter at the bottom of the pan and spread it evenly. The layer of cake batter should have medium thickness. Place the apple slices in a spiral that gradually goes towards the middle.
Add the rest of the batter on top of the apples and even it out. Make the same apple spiral on top. Sprinkle brown sugar and cinnamon on top.
Bake the cake in the middle of the oven (that is now heated to 180°C for about 50 minutes. If it’s still very runny in the middle, bake it for 5-10 extra minutes.
Step 5: Enjoy! And a few ideas
Leave the cake to set in its pan for 10 minutes. The apple cake is best served with whipped cream, Greek vanilla yoghurt or vanilla ice cream.
For some extra autumn vibes, add some almonds or hazelnuts on top. You could also add some raisins on top. For some extra taste of vanilla, add some vanilla cream in the middle. (Please note that all of this has to be done before the cake goes in the oven)
