A tricolor cake for patriots of Estonia

Either thinking about Estonia's recent experiences during street riots or Eurovision song contest - the time's never wrong to think about my home country while cooking. No it's not going to be about sauerkraut in the middle of may! But who cares about the weather, one's mood or current prime minister - there's always room for sweet bites.

My idea was to make a flag cake. A simple, yet...special. Different sponge cake recipes can be used here, but I preferred to make one without eggyolks to maintain the white colour (which I...almost did). The amount of batter I made would have never fitted into my cake mold, so I reduced the recipe to 2/3. To keep it simple.


Estonian flag cake

120 g soft butter
200 g sugar
290 g flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/5 tsp salt
1 1/2 dl milk
2 eggwhites
vanilla
2 tbsp unsweetened cocoa powder
blue food colouring

1. Beat together butter and sugar
2. Mix flour with baking powder and salt. Add the mixture, in turn with milk, to butter until smooth. Add vanilla.
3.Beat the eggwhites stiff and gently mix them into the batter mixture (first mix only some of it to make the batter more fluffy).
4. Divide the batter into three equal parts
5. Grease a loaf pan and pour in 1/3 of the batter. Bake in a middle osition for about 10 minutes at 180C.
6. Add cocoa powder to one part of the batter and pour it onto the first layer. Bake for another 10 minutes.
7. Add blue food colouring to the third part of dough and after pouring it onto the cake, bake for additional 30 minutes.



The taste of the sponge cake is mildly sweet, cocoa gives the middle stripe a strong flavour. The crust is quite hard, so it's actually better to eat the cake using one's hands. Leave your spoon behind! I'd add vanilla sauce or ice cream. Oh yes I would.

But the visual effect kicks ass. It caught my eye every time I passed the kitchen counter (Which I do and do and do and do) and would catch the guests' eyes even more when served as dessert at a party. OK, so these arent' the REAL flag colours...but the cake is blue-black-and-white enough to wait for the Independence Day to come again.