Baumkuchen (tree cake)

This cake is traditionally made during Christmas time in Germany, and with Christmas time just over I figured it was still a good time to try this recipe out.

Ingredients:
6 eggs
150 g marzipan
200 g butter
60 g powdered sugar
1/2 teaspoon ground vanilla (I used 1 package vanilla sugar, but vanilla aroma will work, too)
1 pinch of salt
90 g sugar
50 g wheat flour
60 g starch
80 g orange jam
2 pinches ground cardamom
150 g semi-sweet chocolate

Parchment paper, 8'x8' or 9'x9' baking form, or springform (23 cm diameter)

1. Separate eggs. Beat egg yolks, diced marzipan, butter, powdered sugar, and vanilla until soft and creamy. Fold flour and starch into creamy egg mixture.
2. Beat egg whites and salt until stiff, slowly add sugar and beat for an additional 2 min. Fold stiff egg whites under dough.
3. Preheat oven to 220 degrees Celsius (425F).
4. Line baking form with parchment paper. Add 4-5 tablespoons of dough into baking form and evenly distribute. Add until surface turns golden brown. Remove baking form from oven, add 3 tablespoons of dough, distribute evenly and bake until golden brown. Repeat until all dough is used up (about 10 layers). After last layer is baked, remove cake from oven and let cool for a few minutes.
5. Warm up orange jam until it becomes more liquid, stir in cardamom. Evenly distribute orange jam on top of cake. Let cake cool completely.
6. Melt chocolate, cover top and sides of cake with chocolate, let cool.

Variation: When using a square baking form, the cake can be cut into small triangles after addition of the orange jam. Then the triangles can be covered with chocolate, and served as small pralines. Makes a great gift!

Comments:
1. I baked the cake in my little toaster oven, which worked really well. The first layer I baked using the 'baking' function, which uses a lot of heat from the bottom. Since I was worried that the bottom of the cake might get burned if I continued with this setting, I used the broiler function for the baking of all other layers. The higher the cake becomes, the faster the surface browns!

2. When adding the additional layers on top of a warm layer, the dough becomes almost liquid. By turning the baking form in a circular motion you can make sure the dough covers the entire surface and is distributed evenly. Having noticed this, next time I would pre-warm the baking form before adding the first layer. This should make it easier to put the first layer down, and might make it possible to use less dough and make the first layer as thin as the other layers.

3. Make sure the marzipan is diced very small, or better spread it through a wire mesh. If you don't like any orange pieces or the peel in your jam, you can also spread it through a wire mesh. I thought the tartness of the orange peel paired well with the sweetness of the cake, but the chocolate cover becomes a little uneven with the orange peel on the top of the cake. If you don't like the bitter taste of orange jam you can exchange it for apricot jam.

4. When cutting the cake, per-warm the knife's blade with warm water to avoid the chocolate cover crumbling during the cutting.