The amazing expanding towels

Another exciting feature of the consistantly wonderful Engebret Café was the amazing expanding towel experience. They looked pretty innocuous when our waitress first brought them out to the table - four little round white shapes in a white ceramic bowl. I thought they were some oddly shaped sugar cubes. But no...

Our waitress poured a little bit of boiling hot water into the bowl and we watched in awe as the "suger cubes" expanded to perfectly fill the bowl and sit, gently steaming, until we were ready to clean our hands. Ingenious!

Followed by a lunch of mussels in cream, with French potatoes and aioli. De-licious!

The "World's Best Cake" - in the world's best café

A trip to Oslo would not be complete without a visit to the Engebret Café - the oldest cafe in Oslo where artists and writers like Henrik Ibsen and Edvard Munch used to hang out.

The "World’s Best Cake" is actually the honest-to-goodness real name of this cake (also called Kvæfjord-cake, a traditional Norwegian cake apparently). This picture shows it looking only slightly demolished...

It's a light sponge cake, topped with meringue with a vanilla pudding filling. Yum! And here's how to make it should you be so inclined.