Syrup cake: a Christmas cake from Iceland

• By Dora Mizzi

Icelandic Dora Mizzi prepares a festive cake which her family has been making for generations.

In our home, this cake never really had a name. We used to call it niðursneidda tertan, which literally translated means ‘sliced cake’. At some point though, someone decided that it had to have a name so we now refer to it as the syrup cake, but between ourselves, it is always just the sliced cake. The proper recipe is made up using rhubarb jam, and the syrup was made at home because commodities like that were not readily available. Icing-sugar was also scarce, and so we used it for festive occasions only, just as we did with spices.

My mother gave me this recipe, and she got it from her mother, who also got it from her mother. When I spoke to my mother about it, she said that it was “always” made by her side of the family. We are not sure where it came from, but my ancestral grandmothers might have just made it up by themselves, the idea probably coming from the spices used in the typical piparkökur or spiced cookies made at Christmas in other Scandinavian and Nordic countries. The first settlers in Iceland were after all Norwegian Vikings, from whom we are descended, and we remained under Norwegian rule, then Danish, for centuries. We eventually got our independence but a number of our Christmas customs are common to most Scandinavian countries, though many of them are purely and typically Icelandic.

Iceland is a place of stunning geography: mountains, glaciers, volcanoes, waterfalls, geysers and hot springs. Most of it is uninhabited; the population of just below 300,000 is much smaller than Malta’s, but the island is so much bigger. Vast areas of land must still be crossed between one settlement and another. Most people live in the capital, Reykjavik. Christmas is a very dark day in Iceland, with just a few hours of light, so people found it very easy to believe in elves, trolls and giants. The landscape, the climate and darkness lent themselves to this. There was something else to be feared at Christmas: the black cat which would carry off anyone who didn’t have a new piece of clothing to wear, never to be seen again.

In Iceland, we have 13 Father Christmases, and a giantess called Grýla is their mother. She steals naughty children, carries them up to her mountain in a large sack, and cooks them in a gigantic pot. And her sons were not jolly men in red suits and white beards who bore sacks of gifts, but pranksters who would start arriving 13 days before Christmas and scare people. In the 1960s, a law was passed, banning parents from using fear of Grýla to scare their children into behaving. Her sons have also become better behaved, and have learned to do what other Father Christmases do: bring gifts. Icelandic children don’t hang up stockings though; they put an ordinary shoe in their window 13 days before Christmas, and each morning leading up to the main event they find a little gift from Father Christmas, who comes straight from the mountains rather than through the skies in a reindeer-drawn airborne sleigh. Naughty children don’t get coal, but potatoes.

Despite the legal ban, I grew up afraid of Grýla, and would make sure I was in bed early, to get a gift in my shoe. These are all magical memories, mixed with dark days and candlelight and snow falling, and thoughts of all the things that were moving out there in the cold.

My Maltese sons have grown up with these same traditions since they were born as we have always spent every other Christmas in Iceland, where my parents live. The contrast between the two countries could not be more dramatic, and it’s lovely to see the boys feeling the same excitement and wonder at all these strange traditions as I did as I child.

You will need:

One kilo of flour, 400g of sugar, 350g of butter, 500ml of syrup, three teaspoonfuls each of bicarbonate of soda, ground cloves and ground cinnamon, a jar of jam (not marmalade), 350g of butter, two eggs, 400g of icing-sugar, dish-cloths/tea-towels or similar cloths, two oven-trays around 35cm x 25cm or slightly larger (and about 2cm deep), greaseproof paper, butter or oil for greasing.

Put all the dry ingredients on a large surface. Mix them lightly with your hands. Add soft butter, syrup, and the eggs. Knead until you have soft dough. Split the dough into four parts. Grease the trays with butter or oil. Cut four pieces of greaseproof paper to fit into the trays, and then dust them with flour but don’t put them into the trays. Place one piece of dough on each piece of paper and roll them out, so that the dough is as large as the paper, dusting it with flour so that it doesn’t stick. Now lift the dough up, still on the paper, and put a piece in each tray, so that they are baked two at a time (to fit in the oven). Bake the dough for around 10 to 15 minutes at gas mark 7/200C, or until it is darkish golden-brown. Remove the baked dough by turning the trays upside down onto greaseproof paper and very gently peeling off the paper on which it was baked. Leave the baked dough to cool, when it will acquire a biscuit-like consistency.

Take one piece of baked dough and spread half the icing-sugar over it. Place another layer of baked dough on top. Spread the jam on this, and cover it with another piece of baked dough. On this, spread a layer of icing-sugar, and then the final piece of baked dough. Soak the cloths in cold running water and wring out all the excess water. Put one of these wet cloths on the kitchen-counter surface and put the cake on top of it. Put another wet cloth over it and wrap the cake up well. Leave it like this for a few hours, because it has to soften. Then remove the cloths gently and cut the large cake into triangles, which can then be sliced to serve.