Kärleksmums (Swedish Chocolate Cake)

These spelt kärleksmums are squares of rich cake topped with a coffee infused chocolate icing. There’s also a liberal sprinkling of shredded coconut. The recipe has been adapted to include instructions for both spelt flour and all-purpose (plain) flour.

What are kärleksmums?

Swedish is a language with many compound words, where two or several words are grouped together to form one. Such as kanelbullar (kanel: cinnamon and bullar: buns). It can be quite funny when learning the language to see just how many words they can tag along with each other. Kärleksmums is also a compound word, but is rather tricky to directly translate. Kärlek means love and mums means yum. Adding the s to kärlek is possessive, so the closest translation would probably be love’s yum. Pretty cute, huh? Kärleksmums are also sometimes referred to as mockarutor (mocka = mocha and rutor = squares).

So now we’ve got the translation out of the way, kärleksmums are chocolate cake topped with coffee flavoured icing. They are invariably made in a rectangle baking pan and then cut into squares. Of course I like to do things a little differently, and cut them into just six mahoosive squares. Usually, they are cut into smaller pieces, and you would easily get 12, if not 16, squares. However, my thought process was that I would undoubtedly eat three in one go, so might as well save myself the trouble of walking back into the kitchen each time.

I’ve adapted the traditional recipe of using regular flour to make spelt kärleksmums. However, you can easily use all-purpose (plain) flour instead.

Decilitres in Swedish baking

As an older Brit, I found it quite hard to adjust to some elements of the metric system when it was incorporated across the European Union. However, moving to Sweden meant that I had to adjust to the fact that many ingredients in Swedish recipes are measured in decilitres (written as dl).

While this is perfectly fine for liquids (1dl = 100ml), the accuracy is lost a little when measuring dry ingredients, much like using cups in North America. There are too many variables when you are called to use 1dl of flour, for example. Scales are absolutely the way forward, as weighing your ingredients allows for better results.

Kärleksmums: Sweden’s version of a poke cake

Until I made this recipe myself, I had no idea that it was actually a poke cake. When the cake has been baked, you prod holes in it and pour the icing over, allowing it to seep into the sponge itself. As it’s quite thick, most of the icing stays on the top, but some of it oozes into the cake itself.

The chocolate sponge

As mentioned, Sweden’s recipes are very simple to follow, with a no messing about attitude that I really like. I’ve seen kärleksmums described as a type of brownie, but they really aren’t that at all. Neither are they Sweden’s finest cake, kladdkaka. The sponge is simple to make, using regular cake ingredients such as eggs, butter and sugar. It is fairly light, but doesn’t have a soft pound cake texture. Most Swedish recipes for kärleksmums include a lot of sugar. Mine has a little less, which means that the super-sweet icing is a gorgeous contrast to the sponge.

Kärleksmums are usually quite thin cakes, but I used a fairly small rectangular baking dish to make mine, and the sponge is a little thicker than most other recipes I’ve seen. Of course the thickness depends on what size baking pan or dish you use, and if your pan is a little bigger than mine, the cake will naturally be thinner. You can use any pan you like, but just bear in mind that a thinner cake will require less baking time.

Using coffee in cakes

I have talked until I am blue in the face about how you need coffee in your chocolate cakes. Yes, that’s right, need. I know some people are put off by the thought of coffee, but you can’t taste it. Honestly. Adding coffee does something magical to chocolate cake, and Food and Wine back me up on this with their article, boost the flavour of chocolate desserts.

I am also partial to non-chocolate sweet things where coffee is the star of the show. In the UK, when we say coffee cake, we mean just that (and not a cake served with coffee). Coffee has even found its way into my sweet bread, and coffee cinnamon buns are by far my favourite buns. By a mile.

Although the traditional Swedish recipe for kärleksmums does include coffee in the icing, most recipes don’t include it in the cake. I, of course, added it to mine. For this recipe, I’ve used coffee powder, but in the past, I have used strong brewed coffee.

Chocolate coffee icing for Kärleksmums

In Swedish, the word glasyr is used to describe the topping on kärleksmums. Directly translated, it means glaze. However, when I think of a glaze, I imagine a very runny icing, often used to top doughnuts. It’s not an icing, as it’s too thick. But, it is not really a frosting, either, as it’s too runny.

The topping has the consistency of a thick, soft ganache that doesn’t set hard. However, unlike ganache, there is no melted chocolate or cream involved. It sets almost like a chocolate fudge frosting, but a little softer. The butter is melted, the coffee is added and the rest of the ingredients (icing sugar and cocoa) are quickly beaten in. It does stiffen a little as it cools, but it never sets, remaining soft and luscious, which is exactly as you want it to be.

If you want a thinner icing, so that it soaks more into the sponge, then add two additional tablespoons of milk.

More Swedish desserts to try:

Living in Sweden, I love to bake (and eat) their sweet treats. If you like these spelt kärleksmums, here are some of my other favourites:

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