Puoloffee, the Finnish version of "Banoffee"

Quite many people might know banoffee, a wonderful "marriage" between banana and toffee. I had no clue what's the difference between the English words "caramel" and "toffee", so I had to google it. Based on my knowledge, this should be more banana and caramel, as toffee should be usually something hard and brittle.

But not in banoffee. It's soft, sweet and wonderful.

Now we're making "puoloffee", a Finnish alternative to banoffee. It could be called "lingoffee" or something similar, as the banana has been replaced with lingonberries. If lingonberries are unavailable, cranberries can be used instead. "Cranffee" doesn't sound too promising though.

So now I'm baking this cake special bread. The recipe isn't mine, but very slightly adjusted from an existing recipe.

Ingredients:
Cake.. base? What should be this called? Bottom layer? Cake bottom. That's what we'll call it. Cake bottom.
75 g sugar
150 g gingerbread

Toffee/caramel:
2,5 deciliters of double cream (whipping cream)
2 deciliters of brown sugar (we're using "fariinisokeri", which is a mixture of sugar and syrup)
200 grams of caramel flavored cream cheese

Lingonberry layer:
250 grams of lingonberries (or cranberries)
1/2 deciliters of brown sugar
1 tablespoon of maizena (or potato flour as I did it)
2 tablespoons of water

Whipped cream:
3,3 deciliters of whipping cream

We'll start with the "cake bottom". Bash the gingerbread until it's as fine as you want it to be. The finer the better, actually, but I'm not too picky with it.

Melt the butter and add the butter into the shattered dreams gingerbread pieces.

Take a 24 cm diameter springform pan and if you want to make life easier to yourself, put a baking paper on the bottom. Add the buttery pieces of gingerbread to the form and spread them on the bottom and approx 2 cm high up on the walls.

Then lift it to the fridge so it'll become more solid. While we're waiting, we can cook the caramel/toffee layer.

Start by adding only the double cream and the brown sugar. Heat it up slowly and stir it almost constantly. I'm not good in making some caramel, so at least I was stirring it almost non-stop.

No need to use the highest temperatures on this. Cooking the caramel/toffee layer will take approx. 20-30 minutes, so hopefully you have a strong arm.

I have a very good, strong hand because I was single as a teenager.

Now this is some real good cooking.

I'm using wooden tools to make sure it will not melt. I've lost enough low quality plastic in my kitchen. It's not expensive to replace, but I really don't want to eat a cake with molten plastic in it.

Now this starts to look much better. The caramel/toffee is thicker and is getting a nice, brown color.

It's time to add the cheese. As we all know, cheese makes everything better. No exceptions.

As the cheese is added, just stir it until all the cheese is gone. You can lift it off the stove and let it cool for a few minutes.

If you don't have caramel flavored cream cheese, I'm assuming normal cream cheese can work well enough. The cream cheese I'm using has 20% of caramel sauce, so it's basically 160 grams of cream cheese and 40 grams of extra caramel. It's a quite decent deal!

When the caramel/toffee has cooled down a bit, you can pour it all on the cake bottom. Don't let it cool off too much, as otherwise it will not spread nicely.

Ah yes. Not the most beautiful cake at this stage, but I could eat it like this.

Lift the cake to the fridge to cool off again. I could recommend that you do something else right now, so the toffee/caramel has enough time to cool down. Otherwise it'll be too liquid when the next layer will be added.

As you finally return, the lingonberries will be taken in use. I'm using frozen lingonberries, as we don't have any fresh ones in the winter. I'm adding only the lingonberries and the brown sugar to the kettle to heat them up. No liquid is added, but some lingonberry juice is coming out from the frozen berries as they melt.

The lingonberry-sugar -mixture should start to "boil" a little bit and while waiting for it, you can mix the potato flour/maizena in the water. When the lingonberries are boiling, you can add the potato flour water on the lingonberries.

Tasty.

The lingonberries with the flour/maizena should cook for a few minutes, but it's recommended to stir it a little bit every now and then. The maizena/potato flour will bind the liquid from the berries and turn the lingonberries into a jelly/jam like mass.

As you can see from the photo above, it's clearly less liquid than it was before.
Let the lingonberries cool off a minute and then add them on the cake.

Now this is important.

Don't pour the lingonberries directly from the kettle!

The hot lingonberries will make toffee/caramel very soft. This causes the lingonberry-jam to push the caramel/toffee away and the cake will become uneven.

To get the best result, I recommend adding the lingonberries with a spoon.

Ta-da. I left some caramel/toffee visible on purpose, as I think it looks nice.

Who doesn't love the sight of caramel/toffee?
Take the cake back to the fridge.

Bzzt. Whip the cream.
Can you say that? It sounds wrong.

But remember, don't add the whipped cream before the lingonberries have cooled down. I know this is a lot of waiting on every step, but nobody wants the cream to melt.

The cake starts to be ready, so I.. opened the springform pan?
The cake is standing fine and proud, as am I.

Now the cake can be carefully lifted off to whatever it's final destination is.

As the cream is ready, it can be spread with a spoon or any other tool available.
I've bought a... piping tube? I'm quite sure my translator is just messing with me.

Piping tube.. that sounds like something you install in your car. Goddamit. This can't be true.

But yes, I'm using my.. piping tube, as I'm practicing to use it. (????)

Now as the whole cake is.. piped. Tubed? Well whatever it is, it's ready.

This is not as sweet as banoffee is, as the lingonberry is quite sour. However together with cream and toffee/caramel, it's a very good combination especially for grown ups. Our child doesn't care about the cake, so we're lucky enough to eat it all by ourselves.

Thank you for reading. Hopefully at least one of you will be bold enough to try this.