Cloudberry Sachertorte

My friend Lisa celebrated her birthday here in Bergen last week, and she kindly let me bake a cake for her birthday party (so that I could share the recipe on this blog).

Lisa is allergic to nuts, and I quickly realized that most of my favorite Norwegian cakes contain nuts! So I decided to make something with chocolate instead. And of course the best chocolate cake in the world is the Austrian sachertorte, invented in 1832 by Franz Sacher.

So while I looked through my Norwegian cake recipes, I kept thinking about the sachertorte, and wishing that it were Norwegian instead of Austrian.

But then I thought about it some more and decided I could give it a Norwegian twist!

If you’ve had sachertorte before you’ll know that it’s filled with a layer of apricot jam through the center. And while I do love apricot jam, there’s a Norwgian jam that I love even more: cloudberry jam.

Cloudberries, also known as “Arctic gold,” grow in the Norwegian mountains in the summer. Norwegians are super secretive about their spots to pick cloudberries, and they’ll try to pick enough to freeze to have in desserts throughout the year. But while it might be difficult to get your hands on cloudberries, you can order cloudberry jam online. And it is so delicious!

I was a little unsure if cloudberries would suit this cake, but a quick Google search revealed that I’m not the first person to think of this. Norwegian pastry chef Sverre Sætre apparently also sometimes makes his sachertorte with cloudberries! Though he also adds chocolate cream to the center, so his sachertorte choices might be questionable…

But don’t worry, the cloudberry sachertorte turned out so good. Like, if anyone in Bergen has a birthday soon, I’d love to make you a cake (and help you eat it).

The only time Lisa had tried a sachertorte before was actually at Café Sacher in Vienna, so the pressure was on. But she loved this one too – or she’s an excellent liar.

To make this sachertorte extra Norwegian, I used my mom’s sachertorte recipe that she clipped from an old Alt Om Mat magazine (like 1980s old). My mom’s sachertorte is the best, so I’m so glad she shared the recipe with us.

This recipe calls for a 22 cm (8.6 inch) diameter springform. I only had a 26 cm springform, so I increased the batter size by one egg. I made this with seven eggs.

I set the serving number to six for this recipe so that you can easily increase the cake batter size based on how many eggs you want to use. Now the recipe uses six eggs, but if you click on the 6 next to Servings: you can choose how many eggs you want to bake with (this will adjust the amount of the all other ingredients proportionally).

I always get nervous with recipes that call for folding in egg whites, because you have to be so careful not to deflate the egg whites as you’re mixing the batter. But I found this batter surprisingly easy to work with!

I pushed the cloudberry jam through a strainer to get rid of the seeds. But if you don’t mind the seeds you could skip this step.

Some sachertorte recipes call for jam on top of the cake as well as in the center, but this recipe only uses jam in the center, which is a lot easier. I did really pile the jam on and let it sink into the cake a bit for more flavor. The original recipe says you need half a jar of jam, but I used closer to 3/4 of a jar (also I guess jars come in different sizes). I don’t think you need to be too exact here – just add as much as you want.

The trickiest part of this cake is adding the glaze on top. You’ll want to work really quickly while spreading the glaze (I don’t recommend pausing to take photos like I did).

You’ll often see Sacher written across the top of a sachertorte, but since it was Lisa’s birthday, I wrote Lisa instead. I simply melted some dark chocolate and put it in a plastic bag and cut the tip of the bag. I waited several minutes until the chocolate was cooler so it was easier to write with (you can write out some test letters before writing on the cake).

Sachertorte is best served with whipped cream! I added a little vanilla sugar to the cream before whipping it.

You can switch the recipe from US measurements to metric by clicking from “US Customary” to “Metric” under Ingredients.