L. Sasha Gora: The North, The Nordic and the New Stories about an Icelandic cake

Made with prunes and cardamom, vínarterta is an Icelandic cake with a Viennese name that is more popular today among North Americans with Icelandic heritage than in its home country. Vínarterta is often misspelled (vinartarta or vinaterta), but as sometimes happens in the diaspora, preserving the original Icelandic recipe was a priority in North America whereas in Iceland the recipe evolved. There bakers might use rhubarb or strawberry for the filling - in Canada the prune filling, however, is law; and, like any law, there are different interpretations, which spark heated debates. Icing or no icing? Cardamom or cinnamon in the prune jam? Six layers or seven?

As part of Cooking Pot, Sasha shares stories about food and hybridity, cake and diaspora, the North, the Nordic and the new with recipes for (and slices of) vínarterta.

Supported by the Goethe Institut Glasgow