Kärleksmums
Swedish Chocolate Coconut Squares- Yield
- One 9-by-13-inch pan (24 squares)
- Active
- 20 minutes
- Total
- About 1 1/4 hours, including cooling
- Difficulty
- Easy
The story
Kärleksmums joins two Swedish words: kärlek, love, and mums, a word for something good to eat. Despite the name, no courtship custom is attached to it. It is a plain traybake from the Swedish coffee table, the kind of cake many Swedes have eaten since childhood. A soft cocoa sponge is baked thin in a långpanna, a rectangular baking tray, then spread with a glaze of melted butter, powdered sugar, cocoa and coffee and showered with desiccated coconut. Because it is cut into squares, it goes by other names as well, among them mockarutor, or mocha squares, chokladrutor, kokosrutor and snoddas, and Danes know a similar cake as den du ved nok, roughly the one you know. Recipes from the Swedish magazine Land and the site Recepten.se use nearly identical proportions: two eggs, three deciliters of sugar, four and a half of flour and a short bake in a hot oven. It belongs to fika, the Swedish coffee break, and the grocery chain ICA calls it a cake for adults and children alike while also suggesting it for Valentine's Day. For a dinner for two, cut a few squares into hearts with a cookie cutter and serve them with coffee.
Ingredients
- For the cake:
- 10 tablespoons (1 1/4 sticks) butter, plus more for the pan
- 2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
- 3 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
- 1 tablespoon baking powder
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 2 large eggs
- 1 1/4 cups sugar
- 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
- 2/3 cup whole milk
- For the glaze:
- 4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) butter
- 2 cups powdered sugar
- 1 1/2 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 4 tablespoons strong brewed coffee, cooled
- For the topping:
- 2/3 cup unsweetened desiccated coconut
Sold at natural food stores and online; unsweetened shredded coconut pulsed briefly in a food processor works.
Method
- Heat the oven to 400°F with a rack in the middle. Butter a 9-by-13-inch baking pan and line the bottom with parchment paper.
- Melt the butter and let it cool slightly. Whisk the flour, cocoa, baking powder and salt together in a bowl.
- Beat the eggs and sugar with an electric mixer until pale and fluffy, about 3 minutes, then beat in the vanilla.
- Sift the flour mixture over the eggs, add the milk and melted butter, and stir just until the batter is smooth.
- Spread the batter evenly in the pan and bake until the cake springs back when pressed and a skewer in the center comes out clean, 15 to 18 minutes. Cool completely in the pan on a rack.
- For the glaze, melt the butter, take it off the heat, and whisk in the powdered sugar, cocoa, vanilla and coffee until smooth and glossy; add a few drops more coffee if it is too stiff to spread.
- Spread the glaze over the cooled cake, sprinkle the coconut evenly over the top, and let the glaze set for about 30 minutes before cutting into 24 squares.
Note: Swedish cooks bake this thin and hot, so start checking a few minutes early; an overbaked cake turns dry. The squares keep, covered, for 2 days at room temperature and freeze well for up to 2 months.