This recipe I would like to share here is a great and very traditional Danish birthday cake. The cake is in Danish called a Kagemand which can be translated into something like a Cake Man.
Traditional Danish Birthday Party
I am actually not sure if the origin of this type of cake is Denmark. However, it has differently been made and served here for many years. The cake is a big traditional for kids birthday parties but it can also served for grown-ups birthdays. I guess that one time a year you are allowed to have exactly the type of cake you want and for many it is a great way to get reminded of their child hood.
See also: Traditional recipe for Danish Dagmart Tart
Different varieties of Kagemand
There are several, or maybe more correct, many different ways this cake can be made. However, all of the cakes are somehow made to look like a man or a woman, depending on if it is a boys or girls birthday party. All of the cakes are also normally decorated with frosting and different pieces of candy. The main thing which are changed, depending on how you prefer the cake, is the dough which is used as the base of the cake.
In this recipe I have used my personally favorite dough, which is also the one I think is in general the most preferred. The dough is very light and has a wonderful taste.
Decoration of a Kagemand
The most important thing about this cake is the decoration. I remember how funny it was, as a kid, to help my mother decorate the cake with all kinds of candy. I was just wonderful to see the man/woman shaped cake get turned in live by giving it hair, a mouth, eyes and fingers - all made from frosting and candy. And of course this decoration is normally done and supervised by the birthday kid with help from brothers, sisters or friends.
Ingredients
The cake
- 150 g butter
- 200 g all-purpose flour
- 4 dl water
- 6 eggs
- 2 tsp sugar
Decoration
- frosting
- candy
Instructions
- In a sauce pan; add water and butter and heat it up.
- When the butter is melted; then add the sugar and all-purpose flour in one step.
- Mix all the ingredients well together into a sticky flour-butter dough.
- Transfer the batter into a large bowl and set it aside to cool off a little bit before you continue.
- Use a hand mixer to mix the batter with the eggs. Add the eggs one at the time. The dough should now be soft and more fluent.
- Now you need to be a little creative. On the back side of a semi-transparent sheet of parchment paper draw the outline of your Cake Man or Cake Woman. Flip the paper over and place it on an oven sheet.
- Transfer the dough onto the parchment paper and follow the lines of your Cake Man. Keep in mind that the dough with rise some and expand over the drawn edges. If the dough rises too much, then you can always use a knife to reshape the cake after it is baked.
- Bake the cake in a pre-heated oven at 200 C (400 F) for about 30 minutes. Don’t open the oven when baking the cake – this will cause the cake to collapse. Sometimes this can also happens after the 30 minutes. However, this is not a big deal the taste is still great.
- Let the cake cool off and then decorate it with frosting and different types of candy.
Bruce
I'm demanding my wife make Danish ManCake for my birthday this year. I haven't had one in years, since grandma passed on. I rember decorating it up all crazy with almond icing and smartees.
Kim Nielsen
Hi Bruce. Haha that is a great plan. Decorating is absolutely the most fun part :-)
Tanya
This is Bruce's wife. He got his man cake for his birthday. Thanks for the recipe...
Kim Nielsen
Great! I hope that he liked it :-)
Mary
I recently heard/learned that it was tradition for the birthday boy or girl to cut the Kagemand's throat while the other kids screamed. If so, that's a very Nordic-esque addition to a happy occasion, only in my humble opinion..
Maria
Hi!
Very excited to make it for my son's birthday. What is the name of this dought in Danish?
Kim Nielsen
Hi. The Danish name of this cake is "Kagemand" which directly translates means "Cake man". If the cake is served to a girls/woman birthday party then it is normally called a "cake woman"
Andrea
Is dl the same as ml? For the amount of water.
Kim Nielsen
1 dl is that same as 100 ml. You can use Google to make the conversion. Just search "1 dl to ml" and you get the result.
Kris
Hi and thanks for this, love your recipes blog and I try your recipes often as they are very authentic! I'm hoping you could include a recipe for lagkage, that was the common version of a birthday cake when I was living in Denmark in the late 1980s early 1990s. I would love to try to make one from scratch!
Kim Nielsen
Thanks. I'm happy that you like my blog and that you can use the recipes. Your are right! I'm totally missing a lagkage recipe on my blog. I will put it on my to-do list :-) Regards Kim (NordicFoodLiving.com)