The princess cake’s ascendance

May 11, 2025 by
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The first time I saw a princess cake (aka princess torte), it was in the display case of a Minneapolis bakery. I was intrigued by the domed, green shape topped with one simple decoration at the top. After that initial sighting, princess cakes seemed to appear everywhere: on the Great British Bake Off, in other bakeries, and online. The popularity of the Swedish cake has risen meteorically in the last couple of years, as Eater’s Belinda Makalintal explains.

Known in Sweden as prinsesstårta, the cake was created by Jenny Åkerström, a Swedish cookbook author and home economics teacher who cooked for – you guessed it – Swedish princesses. They allegedly loved the cake so much that its name changed from the original gröntårta, or green cake, to the one it’s known by today. The typical princess cake contains sponge cake layered with vanilla custard and fresh fruit or jam, usually raspberry, topped with a dome of whipped cream and blanketed by a thin sheet of green-tinted marzipan. (No one seems to know why the cake is green.)

Because the cake has several components and isn’t easy to whip up at home, most people buy their princess cake from a bakery. That may be why the EYB Library is thin on online recipes for the cake – there are only 11 at the moment, including Nea’s Swedish princess cake (Prinsesstårta) from Food52 pictured above. There are about 40 recipes in total in the Library. Even though I appreciate a good baking challenge and have The Nordic Cookbook by Magnus Nilsson which has a recipe for princess cake, I have not attempted one. I saw what happened during the GBBO challenge (I think Season 5, Episode 6), and am a bit wary of trying it.

Category: Antipasto

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7 Comments

  • Jane  on  May 11, 2025

    By coincidence I have taken on a challenge from my friends to make a princess cake for a dinner next Saturday, hosted by a Swedish friend. This was after they enjoyed the fabulous desserts I made from our current promotion book, Pâtisserie Made Simple: The Art of Petits Gâteaux. I’m now feeling a bit intimidated by Darcie’s post but I will soldier on and post a review and photo update here. Perhaps I should re-watch that GBBO episode to see what pitfalls they had!

  • anya_sf  on  May 11, 2025

    My sole attempt at princess cake was pretty comical, and I had packaged marzipan I’d brought home from the UK, which should have made it much easier. It tasted okay at least. A local bakery (Schubert’s) makes an excellent version, which is what my family requests for their birthdays.

  • anya_sf  on  May 11, 2025

    Also, note that there are actually more recipes in EYB, but some of them are titled “princess torte” or “prinsesstårta” (including Mary Berry’s).

  • LMKeckler  on  May 11, 2025

    The beautiful cookbook Miette by Meg Ray also includes a Princess Cake recipe.

  • DKennedy  on  May 11, 2025

    This is my absolute favorite cake to eat. Never contemplated making one from scratch.

  • sanfrannative  on  May 12, 2025

    Made one from scratch in pastry school–it was really fun and turned out great! Try it!

  • Jane  on  May 21, 2025

    I made the cake on Saturday and it was spectacular! I used the NYT recipe by Nicola Lamb which had really good instructions. I liked that you build the cake layers inside a bowl lined with the marzipan rather than building from the base up and covering with marzipan, as they did on GBBO. You can see my note and photos on the indexed recipe. Apologies to EYB members who don’t subscribe to NYT Cooking. If you are planning to make this cake I’d say it worth just subscribing for a month to get this recipe!

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