Birthday Cake – Lagkage or Kagemand?
Lagkage or kagemand? Growing up, this was an easy question, as we always chose lagkage for our birthdays. It’s much easier to make from scratch when you don’t live in Denmark, and once you get a bit older, the appeal of a kagemand fades a little bit. Plus, we just personally prefer the flavors in a lagkage, a layer cake made with vanilla sponge, vanilla custard, and raspberry jam.
A kagemand, on the other hand, is more about the visual aspect of it looking like a person, rather than the taste of the cake itself. You also decorate it with candy, which is hard to do when you can’t get the Danish licorice and Haribo sweets. But while we might be slightly biased towards lagkage, who in their right mind would complain about either type of birthday cake? Both are absolutely delicious and if you haven’t tried them, you should give one of them a go for your next birthday celebration.
Today’s Recipe
Why are we talking so much about birthday cake? Well, today’s recipe is another option for a show-stopping celebratory cake, possibly for a birthday or other occasion. This one, though, isn’t made with sponge. Instead, it’s a pancake cake! We use thin pancakes stacked together with layers of vanilla pastry cream and raspberry jam to create a visually stunning and delicious layered cake. If you’re American, you might argue that these aren’t pancakes, they’re crepes, and yes, you’re right. These are Danish pancakes, which are the same as most pancakes in Europe – thin and crepe-like. They are only slightly sweet, which is nice, as the pastry cream is rich and sweet. The raspberry jam then adds a tartness and a freshness that is a welcome balance to the other layers. Yum!
Satisfying and Showstopping
This pancake cake is one of my favorite recipes we’ve developed recently, mostly because it feels so satisfying to make. You do have to first cook a lot of pancakes, which is a bit more involved than just putting a cake in the oven, but putting the masterpiece together is what feels so satisfying. You take your three components and by layering them on top of one another over and over again, you end up with a gorgeous and tasty dessert!
Well-balanced and Customizable
Like I said, the flavors are really well-balanced in this pancake cake, with freshness from the raspberry cutting through the richness and sweetness of the pastry cream and pancakes. Best of all, the flavors are customizable, so if you’re someone who likes to play around with different flavor combinations, you can experiment with this recipe for sure. I can already think of a delicious chocolate version, with chocolate pancakes, chocolate pastry cream, and a delicious strawberry jam…you might just see that version on the blog at a later date 😆
Ingredients
To make the pancakes, you’ll need all-purpose (plain) flour, sugar, salt, milk, butter, and eggs. You can add other flavors if you like, such as vanilla extract, lemon zest, or a dash of cardamom. For the pastry cream, you’ll need egg yolks, sugar, salt, vanilla extract, cornstarch (cornflour), milk, and butter. Finally, to make the raspberry jam, you’ll need frozen raspberries (you can use fresh but it’s more affordable to go for frozen, to be honest), sugar, salt, lemon juice, and lemon zest.
Substitutions
There are a few places you can make substitutions; for example, you can substitute plant-based milk in all parts of the recipe that call for regular milk. When we say to use unsalted butter specifically, you can use salted, but just add less salt to the recipe. You could make chocolate pastry cream instead of vanilla – here’s our chocolate version. Finally, feel free to make a different type of jam or curd instead of raspberry, you can choose whatever you like! I can picture a blueberry jam with a lemon curd pancake cake that would be very tasty and perfect for spring or summer.
Instructions
The first step to this recipe is making the pastry cream and jam, since they have to cool in the fridge before you can use them. Follow the steps carefully to get smooth pastry cream, as you need to constantly whisk to make sure the eggs don’t get lumpy. When it comes to the jam, you may need to boil it for longer/shorter time depending on your stove and the fruit you’re using. It needs to be pretty thick before you take it off the stove, but remember it will also get thicker as it cools.
For the pancakes, the batter is very straightforward, but we like to give the dry ingredients a whisk with half of the milk before adding the eggs and rest of the milk, just so we get a super smooth batter. The detailed steps are in the recipe below. Once all the components are cooled, you can assemble and decorate this showstopper of a cake. Enjoy!
Pandekagelagkage (Vanilla and Raspberry Pancake Layer Cake)
Ingredients
PANCAKE BATTER
- 300 grams all-purpose flour
- 3 tbsp granulated sugar
- Pinch of salt
- 750 ml milk (room temperature/heated up in the microwave to remove the chill from the fridge)
- 100 grams unsalted butter, melted
- 6 large eggs (room temperature)
VANILLA PASTRY CREAM
- 4 large egg yolks
- 75 grams granulated sugar
- Pinch of salt
- 1.5 tsp vanilla extract
- 35 grams cornstarch
- 600 ml milk
- 45 grams unsalted butter
RASPBERRY JAM
- 500 grams frozen raspberries
- 200 grams granulated sugar
- Pinch of salt
- 1.5 tbsp lemon juice
- Lemon zest optional
DECORATION (OPTIONAL)
- 180 ml heavy whipping cream *can also just use 120ml (or 1/2 cup), we just like a very thick layer of whipped cream!
- 2 tsp granulated sugar (optional)
- Splash of vanilla extract
- Sprinkles, fresh fruit, chocolate, anything else you like!
Instructions
RASPBERRY JAM
- Combine the frozen berries, sugar, salt, lemon juice, and lemon zest in a saucepan and cook on the stove over medium heat until thick enough to see the bottom of the pan for a few seconds when you run your spatula across it. This should take about 15-20 minutes for raspberries but can take up to an hour if you use other berries that release more water.
- Transfer to a tupperware container or jar, and let this cool at room temperature for about 20 minutes before covering and transferring to the fridge to cool completely.
VANILLA PASTRY CREAM
- Combine the egg yolks, sugar, salt, vanilla extract, and cornstarch in a large heat-proof bowl. Whisk vigorously until smooth.
- Heat the milk in a saucepan over medium heat. Once it starts to very lightly simmer, pour half of the milk into the egg mixture, whisking continuously so no lumps form.
- Then, put the pan with the remaining milk in it back on the heat and pour in the egg/milk mixture from the bowl.
- Continue whisking the custard until it thickens, this should not take very long but it needs to come to a boil for the starches to thicken the mixture.
- Once thick, remove from the heat and add the butter, whisking until it melts into the mixture.
- Transfer to a heatproof bowl and cover with cling film, pressing the cling film down to touch the surface of the cream (this prevents a skin from forming as it cools). If you have time, you can leave this at room temperature for 20 minutes, then transfer to the fridge to cool (otherwise, just put it in the fridge immediately).
PANCAKES
- Once your jam and pastry cream are chilled, you can start making the pancakes for the cake.
- Combine the flour, sugar, and salt in a large bowl.
- Add half of the milk and whisk until you have a completely smooth, non-lumpy batter.
- In a separate bowl, combine eggs and remaining milk; whisk well to combine.
- Add the eggs mixture to the rest of the batter and whisk until smooth.
- Whisk in the melted butter, making sure it gets fully incorporated.
- You should be left with a smooth batter with no lumps that is relatively thin.
- To cook the pancakes, use a non-stick pan (our pan is a 9 inch pan on the bottom) over medium heat. Scoop up about 1/3 cup of the batter and pour into the center of the pan, while simultaneously twisting the pan in a circle so that the batter coats the bottom of the pan all the way to the edges.
- Flip after a minute or two and cook for another 30 seconds on the second side. Set aside onto a plate. Repeat this until you run out of batter and let the pancakes cool. We ended up with 24-28 pancakes – this will depend on the size of your pan, how thick you make them, or how many you end up snacking on during the cooking process!
- To assemble the cake, start with a pancake on the bottom.
- Add a thin layer of pastry cream over the pancake, spreading it with an offset spatula or a butter knife.
- Add another pancake, then spread on a thin layer of jam.
- Repeat with alternating layers of jam and pastry cream, until you run out of pancakes, filling, or both! We found that we got just the right amount of pastry cream and jam for 24 pancake layers (so 12 layers of each filling). You may have a few pancakes leftover!
- Remember to keep the layers of filling thin so that you have enough filling for the entire cake!
- For decoration: make whipped cream by whipping heavy cream, sugar, and vanilla together in stand mixer or using a handheld mixer or just a whisk, until it reaches stiff peaks.
- To decorate, we added the whipped cream on top and some sprinkles, but you can leave it bare or make it even fancier if you like with fresh fruit, chocolate, crumbled up cookies, or anything else you'd like!
- This cake is best after chilling for an hour or two, as it helps to set up the layers! If you serve it right away, be prepared that some of the layers may slide around a little bit! Enjoy!
