Lagkage (Danish Birthday Layer Cake)

Family Traditions

In every family, there are certain foods or dishes that bring back memories. In ours, it’s this birthday layer cake, called a fødselsdagslagkage, or just a lagkage. For every single birthday, even now, our mom will stay up late the night before baking and assembling this cake. Then the next day, we all sit down in the afternoon to eat cake, with coffee or hot chocolate. It’s one of the most important traditions in our family. It’s also an amazing cake. Three layers of raspberry jam and vanilla kagecreme (pastry cream) sandwiched between four layers of soft vanilla sponge – just so heavenly.

Our Great-Grandmother

The image above of a handwritten recipe was our inspiration for this particular lagkage recipe. Our oldemor (great-grandmother) was an incredible woman. She had 8 children and lived right across the street from us in our childhood home in Nykøbing Sjælland. She would make lots of these cakes for birthdays, because our morfar (grandfather) and his brothers used to compete to see who could eat the most. They would eat at least half a cake each and often more than that, which, knowing how rich this cake is, is both gross and impressive.

Oldemor wrote down the recipe for my mother, her granddaughter, and we still have the handwritten recipe (as pictured!). It was tricky to adapt to modern day measurements, because oldemor used an old cup to measure her baking ingredients. For example, the “2 kopper hvedemel” (“2 cups of flour”) are based on the one cup she used for everything. We don’t have that cup, so we had to do a bit of math and experimentation to adapt the recipe. Luckily, we figured it out, and the recipe and cake turned out great. And, according to our mother, tastes just like the cake oldemor used to make!

Tips & Tricks

The cake itself is not too difficult to make, but the process is a bit time consuming. You should make the kagecreme and jam in advance, so that they have time to completely cool before assembly. When you make the sponges, make sure not to overmix the batter, or your cake will be tough. We have given some tips and specific instructions for mixing the cake batter in the recipe below!

Once you assemble the lagkage, you shouldn’t eat it straight away. You need to let it sit in the fridge at least overnight, but a bit longer is better. This will allow the jam and creme filling to saturate the sponges a bit. The layers will then come together into a cake with amazing texture and flavor. Finally, this cake has a lot of cornstarch in it, which seems kind of weird. Our oldemor’s original recipe uses potato starch, which makes the sponge very tender, crumbly, and light. We’ve tested it with both starches, and both work perfectly. We hope you try this out, and we promise, you don’t need the excuse of a birthday to make it!

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Lagkage (Danish Birthday Layer Cake)

4.56 from 9 votes

Not a birthday goes by in our house without one of these cakes! This layered birthday cake consists of four layers of vanilla sponge, three layers of raspberry jam and vanilla pastry cream, and a whole lot of icing and whipped cream to decorate.

Servings 12 slices

Prep Time 1 hour hr 30 minutes mins

Cook Time 15 minutes mins

Setting Time 8 hours hrs

Total Time 9 hours hrs 45 minutes mins

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IMPORTANT NOTE:

We always bake using a digital scale and the metric system (grams and milliliters). We can’t promise that our cup measurements will be as accurate! Additionally, we bake and develop our recipes in a convection (fan) oven.

Ingredients

  

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CAKE BATTER (FOR A 4-LAYER CAKE)

• 290 grams (1 1/2 cups) granulated sugar
• 190 grams (14 tbsp) unsalted butter, softened
• 3 large eggs, room temperature
• 200 grams (1 1/2 cups) flour
• 100 grams (3/4 cup) cornstarch or potato flour
• 1.5 tsp baking powder
• 145 ml (2/3 cup) milk *you can heat this for a very short amount of time in the microwave to take away some of the chill. this will help keep the ingredients from separating!
• 1 tsp vanilla extract

FILLING

• 1-1.5 portions kagecreme (vanilla pastry cream) *for more distinct layers and pastry cream texture, we do recommend making one and a half portions of kagecreme, as the sponges will absorb some of the pastry cream as it sits in the fridge. but you can also make it with one portion!
• 1 portion homemade raspberry jam recipe *depending on how much raspberry flavor you want, you can adjust how much jam you add to each layer! we love a lot of raspberry, so we tend to add more, but you can adjust to your tastes! you can also use storebought jam, or even fresh fruit instead!

DECORATION

• Powdered sugar
• Water
• Sprinkles
• 475 ml (~16 oz; 2 cups) heavy whipping cream *we usually just whip a full 2 cups of heavy whipping cream and have a little bit leftover! you could likely get away with 1.5 cups if needed!

Instructions

 

• Make the kagecreme (1-1.5 portions, depending on your preference) and jam and let them completely cool. We would recommend doing this the morning of the day you are assembling the lagkage (so the day before serving it). You can also use store-bought custard and/or jam to make it easier!
• Butter two cake pans (we used 9 inch cake pans) and line the bottoms with parchment paper by measuring out a square of parchment paper that fills the bottom, pressing it into the pan so you get the outline of a circle, and cutting out the circle. If you have pre cut round sheets of parchment, you can use those! Preheat the oven to 400 F (204 C).
  
• Add your softened butter and granulated sugar to the bowl of a stand mixer, or a mixing bowl. Using your stand mixer, or a hand mixer, beat together the sugar and butter for about 5 minutes until the mixture is very fluffy. It should also lighten considerably in color!
  
• Add the 3 eggs to the butter and sugar mixture, one at a time! After each egg, allow the mixer to run for 30 seconds, or until the egg is well incorporated. This will stop the mixture from splitting! Another tip to avoid the mixture splitting – make sure your eggs are at room temperature. You can take them out of the fridge an hour beforehand, or if they're straight out of the fridge, place them in a bowl with hot water for 5-10 mins. If you do find the mixture has split, you can often save it after adding the dry ingredients, as this can help bind it back together.
  
• Then, combine your dry ingredients (flour, cornstarch or potato flour, and baking powder) in a separate bowl. Whisk together to get rid of any lumps.
  
• Combine the rest of the wet ingredients (milk and vanilla extract) in a separate small bowl/measuring cup. If the milk is straight from the fridge, heat it up briefly (5-10 seconds). This will help keep the ingredients from separating.
  
• Now it's time to combine the ingredients for the batter. Add half of the dry ingredients to the mixer and run the mixer for just around 5-10 seconds . It's okay if some dry spots remain!
• Then, add half of the wet ingredients and do the same, running the mixer for 5-10 seconds.
  
• Repeat with the rest of the dry, running the mixer for 5-10 seconds, then the rest of the wet, running the mixer for 5-10 seconds or until everything looks incorporated. Give the final mixture some folds with a rubber spatula to make sure it's well combined, but do not overmix!
  
• Divide the mixture evenly between the two cake pans and place in the oven.
  
• Bake for 12-15 minutes, or until a cake tester comes out clean.
• After you remove the cakes from the oven, let them cool for about 5 minutes. Then run a knife along the edge of the pans and remove the cakes from the pan, leaving them to cool on a wire rack. We usually leave the parchment paper on at this stage, and remove it right before assembling.
  
• Once the cakes are cooled, trim the tops off (if the cakes are domed on top), and cut each sponge in half. This can be tricky to get completely even, so don't worry if it isn't perfect! The best tip that we have is to keep the knife completely horizontal as you cut through it, and get down on eye level with the knife!
  
• Make sure you have your pastry cream and jam ready (& cooled down/chilled) at this stage!
• To assemble: start with a layer of sponge, then add a layer of kagecreme/pastry cream. Spread evenly across the sponge all the way to the edges with a knife.
  
• Add jam on top of the pastry cream. We like a lot of jam in ours, but adjust according to your taste! Spread evenly across the pastry cream, also going all the way to the edges.
  
• Repeat this – sponge, creme, jam. Repeat again – sponge, creme, jam.
  
• Place the final layer of sponge on top.
  
• Wrap the cake in plastic wrap and let it rest overnight (8-12 hours) or until whenever you will serve the cake the next day. This will allow the layers to hold together!
  
• The next day, prepare your cake decorations by making a thick icing, combining about a cup of powdered sugar and a very small amount of water until you reach the desired consistency. We usually don't measure out the amounts that we use, but feel free to add more powdered water or sugar to get more icing!
• Whip your heavy whipping cream using a stand mixer, a hand mixer, or a whisk and a bowl until it reaches stiff peaks. Sometimes, we whip it just a few seconds beyond this, so it holds its shape even better when decorating. Also, we do not sweeten our whipped cream, but if it's your preference to do so, add some sugar!
• Pour the powdered sugar icing glaze on top of the cake and spread to the edges; try not to let the icing go over the edge! It's best if it's a thicker consistency.
  
• Add some sprinkles on top of the glaze. You can also add fresh fruit!
  
• Pipe the prepared whipped cream along the edges of the cake – the specifics are up to you! We usually pipe in a continuous up and down pattern, going right up over the edge so that the whipped cream doesn't slide down. You can also do dots of whipped cream all along the edge, or just use a knife to add the whipped cream around the edges!
  
• Decorate the cake with candles, more sprinkles, dots of whipped cream, fresh fruit, a written message, or whatever you like!
  
• Light the candles on the cake and enjoy!
  

Video

Course: Dessert

Cuisine: Danish

Keyword: birthday, celebration, festive, icing, jam, layers, raspberry, vanilla, whipped cream

Difficulty: Advanced