The Great British Bake Off Week Six - Gothenburgers

This is what they should look like!

When I saw the theme for this week's show I knew exactly the recipe book I would be using. My swedish friend bought me a 'swedish cakes and cookies' recipe book for my birthday and I've been aching to make something from it for ages.

At first I thought I might make the princess cake they made on GBBO this week but on second thought I decided it would probably be better to do something a bit easier for my first european bake. After a flick through the recipe book, I chose these Gothenburgers as they looked interesting and completely different to anything I've made before.

Note, you will need quite a few mixing bowls for this recipe as it involves making 3 different mixtures.

Ingredients
75g butter

This is the recipe book, although I
doubt you'll be able to find it in
any UK book shops

2 tablespoons of sugar
½ egg
¾ all-purpose flour

Piped edge
200g almond paste
1 egg white

Filling
100g almond paste
50g butter
1 egg

Garnish
strawberry/raspberry jam
icing sugar
water
75g chocolate

Before I start, let me just say that this is probably the most complicated recipe I've ever made but I think once you've tried it you'll only get better! Well the first thing you might notice is that this recipe requires almond paste. I had no idea what this was so after doing some googling I found that in England it's marzipan but in USA it's something completely different. As many of the recipes in this book are written in an American style I decided to make some almond paste. But having now made the Gothenburgers I would suggest using marzipan!

If you would like to make your own almond paste though, the recipe I used is here.

Ok start by putting the butter, sugar and egg (from the first part of the ingredients list) into a large bowl and combine using an electric whisk, adding the flour gradually. The recipe states all-purpose flour which always confuses me, is it self-raising or plain? I've made a cake before and used plain flour as all-purpose flour and this was a big mistake so I decided in this case to use self-raising flour. However, I found the mixture to be quite sticky, even after adding lots more flour, when the recipe said it should be like a dough. Looking back now, I might try plain flour next time to see if that works.


Having given up hoping to get the mixture any more dough-like, I spooned the mixture into some cling film and put in the fridge for half an hour to hopefully harden. Whilst that is chilling, make the edge mixture by beating the almond paste or grated marzipan with the egg white until smooth. Next, make the filling by beating the butter until fluffy, then adding the almond paste or grated marzipan and egg gradually whilst continuing to beat with an electric whisk. At this stage, I would start to preheat the oven to 180°C.

Now at this point the recipe said to 'roll out the pastry'. Having taken my chilled cake mix out of the fridge I realised this was going to be a problem. I decided to make the dough stiffer I would roll it in quite a lot of plain flour. It helped a little bit but the mixture did still get stuck to the kitchen worktop so I would suggest covering the surface in a thick layer of flour before rolling it out. So now carefully roll out the cake mixture to be about 1 cm in thickness, cut out circle shapes using a cookie cutter and then lay them onto lined baking trays, leaving space incase they grow whilst baking.

Next, using a teaspoon spread a thickish layer of the filling mixture onto the middle of each circle, leaving an edge free all the way round. Now, pipe the edge around each circle using the piping edge mixture. As you can see, my mixture was way too liquidy so just slumped off the side of each disk! But at this stage I just had to deal with what I'd got.

I baked the Gothenburgers for approximately 12 minutes, just until I could see that they had turned golden. Take out of the oven and leave to completely cool before decorating. Spread the centre of each with a layer of jam and then a layer of icing, made from the icing sugar and water, on top. Leave to set for a few minutes and then cut each one in half before dipping the straight edge into melted chocolate.

And there you have it, Gothenburgers. If I can make them neater next time they would make an impressive party snack. But they taste delicious and that's the main thing!