Fame fame, fatal fame...

... it can play hideous tricks on your brain.

The main one being that in a six month period between filming and transmission, all sorts of rubbish goes on in your head. "I was a complete tit", "I made a bad joke", "I looked horrible". So come the day of broadcast, when your mum has told all her friends, everyone you know is ready to watch and there's absolutely nothing you can do about it, you end up watching from behind your hands, wondering if your only five minutes of airtime will be the most humiliating thing ever.

It wasn't. I lived. And had an entire day of people telling me how brilliant I am. I could get used to that.

Icing ninja

This is the story of what it's like to be a "member of the public" guest on an ITV daytime programme.

"Hi, I'm calling from Let's Do Lunch with Gino and Mel! We'd like to have you and your kransekake on a Christmas show. Do you watch the programme?"
"Yes" (no)
"You know who Gino diCampo is?"
"Of  course!" (no)

A week later I'm lugging a 10-layer kransekage on the tube and making my way to the huge ITV tower on the South Bank. Pictures in reception: Jeremy Kyle, This Morning, Lorraine Kelly... I'm clueless, I rarely watch TV in the day, I never watch ITV unless it's something with David Tennant in. Or Agatha Christie's Marple, I love a bit of Marple. As I'm sitting there, an arguing couple exit the lift.
Oh good god, I'm in Jeremy Kyle land. Help me!

The producers are lovely, desperate to find someone reasonably sane and friendly to fill their slot and jumping on my words like I'm the most interesting person ever. I get carried away.
"Sometimes," I say, "we put chocolate on the base of the kransekage". Production lady is over the moon. "Chocolate! Yes, that will be great". There is no chocolate on a stacked kransekage. Somehow I forget to mention it.
"And green and red icing! Because Gino's Italian and he's decorating the cake!"
Nooooo. Never. Oh, okay then.

I'm in. Filming in two weeks. We need an 18-layer cake for display, and 18-layer cake for Gino and a spare one in case things go wrong. Icing bags, flags (Italian), icing, plates, decorations. I make a list, down to the last plate, and send it to the producer.

"This is great. Can you specify how many flags you'll be bringing? Also, we've decided Mel's going to make one too so we need another cake and some English flags.

Right. Another internet order, another kilo of marzipan. We're up to four cakes.

"Hi Karen. Great news! The guest's going to join the challenge too! So we'll need another cake. He's English though so you can use the same flags.".

Right... five kransekage, That's a lot of kransekage. "Oh, and another spare!"
Six.

I'm a bit cross until I ask who the guest is. It's only Warwick "Willow" Davies. My geek brain goes a bit crazy and I'm suddenly in love with the whole thing again. TV, huh?

They send a car to pick me up, which is marvellous. Every day should start like this.
Two producers and I fight through the crowds in reception (there are only two lifts working) carrying an assortment of boxes, and I'm led through to the studio, where I dump everything on a table before being taken straight through to make up. It's 10am. We're filming at 12.30. Ish. Hopefully.

Make up is wonderful. I'm brought a coffee and offered pastries and a fantastic, cheerful lady in red lipstick and leopardskin with an astounding number of bottles sets to, finding some cheekbones I never knew I had and generally turning early-morning me into something almost unrecognisable.

In make-up

A final bit of lipstick and firm instructions for nil by mouth until filming and I'm off to sort out my cakes.

I put three uniced kranskage on to plates, arrange my already iced and almost stacked display cake and lay out the icing bags and flags. The chocolate is nowhere to be seen. There is an awful lot of waiting around as the producers and presenters do their job, set up angles, fiddle with autocues and do timings. There's a rehearsal, during which I make a mess of talking, and a pep talk. Oh, and we're not using the flags. We're definitely using the chocolate though. A runner is put on chocolate duty.

I meet Warwick Davies in the green room and manage to keep my cool by being entirely silent and completely failing to ask for the selfie I really wanted to get with him. We all watch the show start, Mel and Gino transformed from the efficient, busy professionals of earlier into sparkly smiley presenters and one by one we file in, Warwick Davies first, the cheese lady second and then finally me.

Chatting to Professor Flitwick like it ain't no thing

When I finally go on, I'm a lot more confident than in rehearsal. It goes so quickly I can hardly remember what happened. I know I shouted (I do that, I can't seem to help it) and, worst of all, made an accidental height joke at my geek hero. But then it's off set to clear up and out of the building and that's that for almost six months.

Bad education

Then it's on. My phone's broken so I borrow a lovely customer's smartphone and watch it from behind my hands with my friend Andy. He likes it, I like it, the accidental height joke is funny instead of offensive, my parents are proud. My brother puts it on YouTube and I put it on my page.

A customer emails: "I'm a little worried about the chocolate and the icing. Can you assure me you'll make a traditional kransekage?" Well yes, I reply. Of course I will. "But on the TV..."

Clearly I am willing to do anything to be on TV, like those people who eat insects in the jungle. I have no shame. I don't even care.

Fast forward two weeks and Paul Hollywood makes his kransekake on prime time BBC1. I have no idea what the man's thinking. Semolina for a start. And who on earth would cover a kransekake in red icing and green glitter? It's shocking, really.

Within two weeks there have been two kransekage on TV. Both have been wrong. One of them is my fault. I'm sorry, I really am. I promise to make only the most traditional, lovely kransekage from here on in. Unless I'm asked to be on TV again, then all bets are off.

Autographs are available on request and only a small charge for selfies. Contact my agent.

Thanks to Stacey for the screengrabs. x

Watch me gleefully sacrifice my art for fame here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1TAIvG6svVo&feature=youtu.be

The real Scandi tower

Who saw The Great British Bake-Off last night? Other than the tragedy of me not having any biscuits in the house (and after a day of baking I wasn't about to turn the oven on again), it surprised me by being my favourite episode ever.

Quite apart from the Dalek biscuit tower - I love Doctor Who bakes - someone made a kransekage! Well, sort of. Glenn's Macaron helter-skelter was made in the pans and kind of the right shape. Which gives me the perfect opportunity to talk about what they should be like.

I cannot find a picture of Glenn's cake, despite putting writing on hold for an hour to search for one, so here's a picture of Glenn. Look at his face. I love Glenn.

© BBC

So, back to the subject: kransekage.

Kransekage is what the Danes call them, the Norwegians say Kransekake. The Swedes, for reasons unknown, don't eat them at all. They are not macarons, despite being almond based. While macarons are very light and delicate, kransekage are more solid, with a thicker "shell". More almonds, less egg white. And no flavouring: the almonds stand out for themselves. And they're far easier to stack; Glenn is either a genius or a madman, but I wouldn't try and stack macarons ever. It worked though, hats off to the man.

You can make kransekage with ground almonds, and many Scandies do, but the best way I've found is to use a base of proper Danish marzipan. I favour either Anton Berg or Odense, both of which are 60% almond. To put this into context, the marzipan we get here and use to cover cakes is around 25%. The difference is important: You couldn't make a kransekage with British marzipan, it would taste of nothing; and covering a Christmas cake in Danish marzipan doesn't work at all, it just doesn't seal the cake.

I instagrammed the ingredients because they're so pretty!

© Karen's Kitchen

The stacked kransekage are celebration cakes: New Year, weddings, anniversaries, special birthdays. It's a testament to how much they are loved that the ex-pat Twitter community got very excited when Glenn produced those tins. We love them. You can have finger bites which taste just as good, but there's something about those stacked beauties that just makes people happy. I baked them for my son's naming day and my Mum's 60th, they were my wedding cake and my parents' Ruby anniversary cake. Every Dane I know had them at their weddings.

Despite baking them all the time, kransekage are still one of my favourite cakes. In Denmark I seek them out in all their forms and I never get bored with them. Why? Well apart from the fact that they are always a treat, they are just amazing. Soft on the inside with a not-quite-crispy crust, rich but still light, satisfying in every way. And this is what they should look like:

© Karen's Kitchen

See? SEE? They're so TALL. And golden. Inviting you to break off a piece, bite through the crunchy icing and savour the light almonds inside.

And if that's not enough, they also come dipped in chocolate!

For a more reasoned description, I'd recommend you read my friends at Scandinavian Kitchen's blog.