Julekake Recipe(Norwegian Cardamom Scented Christmas Bread) | Eggless Julekake Recipe | Norwegian Christmas Bread

I am wishing you all the blessings of a wonderful Christmastime & Happy Holidays. Enjoy the holidays with your family and friends. Now coming to today's recipe, For this Month's We Knead to Bake we are baking Julekake / Norwegian Cardamom Scented Christmas Bread. Julekake (or Julekaka/ Julekaga) is a rich bread flavoured with cardamom, and is traditionally served at Christmas in many Scandinavian countries. It is particularly popular in Norway and Denmark. This bread is more cake-like in texture, very soft rich and delicious bread. The bread is baked plain or is glazed with icing. Traditionally the plain bread is served warm at breakfast with butter or a Norwegian caramelised brown goat milk cheese called Gjeitost/ Brunost.

As the bread is rich and contains dry fruits I did not glaze them. Traditionally the bread is prepared with Citrus peel and flavored with Cardamom. But you can also use any dry fruits, raisins or red/green colored cherries to reflect the festive mood. Here, I used Dried cranberry and tutti frutti, but added in less amount. I prepared both Egg and Eggless Julekake version. For Eggless Julekake, I simply followed the same recipe and skipped Egg. The pictured ones are Eggless Julekake.
Both turned out soft and delicious, the Eggless Julekake was light compared to the egg version and tasted similar to the Honeycomb Buns/Khaliat Nahalwhich we baked last year.

Eggless Julekake Recipe

Recipe Source : My Diverse Kitchen

Prep Time : 2 hrs | Baking Time : 30 Minutes

Make 1 large round bread

Ingredients
For Bread

1. All Purpose Flour   2 and 1/2 cups
2. Instant Yeast  1 tsp
3. Sugar   1/4 cup*
4. Salt   1/2 tsp
5. Butter, soft    3.5 tbsp
6. Lukewarm Milk    1 cup
7. Cardamom   5 no.(powdered)
8. Mixed Candied fruit or peel   1/2 cup
9. Golden or Dark Raisins   1/4 cup

For Milk wash

1. Milk  2 tbsp
2. Sugar  1/2 tsp

For Icing

1. Icing sugar   1/2 cup 
2. Cream or milk   1 to 2 tbsp
3. Almond Extract  1/4 tsp 
4. Chopped Almonds   1 tbsp(optional)

Method

• In a stand mixer bowl or in a mixing bowl add flour, yeast, salt and sugar mix well until combined.
• To this add butter and milk and knead until to soft, elastic and smooth dough.
• Then remove the dough spread to big circle and sprinkle dry fruits and fold and roll the dough.
• Knead for few more minutes and shape to a ball and place it in a oiled bowl and set to rise for 1 hour.
• After an hour or the dough has risen in volume, punch down the dough and knead again for a minute then shape it to a ball
• and place it in a greased baking sheet or cake pan and set to rise for 45 minutes.
• Once done, brush the dough with milk wash and bake it ina preheated oven 350 F for 30 minutes.
• If desired after brushing with milk, you can also sprinkle crushed sugar cubes or chopped almonds and bake it.

Notes:
*Reduce the sugar to half if you plan to use icing.
For Egg version, just add 1 Egg to the above recipe and reduce the milk to 3/4 cup. And add egg in the 2nd step along with milk and butter.

This is off to We Knead to Bake # 23.