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.

Black Forest Cake

Black Forest Cake (Ø 26 cm)

The original German recipe can be found here: 

http://www.oetker.de/oetker/rezepte/backen/torten/schwarzwaelder_kirschtorte_ø_26_cm.html

Time: 80 min not including baking and cooling times.

For the springform (Ø 26 cm): some butter, Parchment paper

Sponge cake: 3 eggs, 100 g sugar, a package vanilla sugar or some vanilla aroma, 80 g flour, 1 ts baking powder, 25 g starch, 10 g unsweetened cocoa powder, a pinch of cinnamon

Shortcrust bottom: 125 g flour, 10 g unsweetened cocoa powder, 2 pinches of baking powder, 50 g sugar,  a package vanilla sugar or some vanilla aroma, 1 egg, 50 g soft butter

Filling: 1 jar of sour cherries (Trader Joes), 30 g starch, 25 g sugar, 3 tablespoons Kirschwasser, 1 package gelatine, 5 TS cold water, 800 g cold whipping creme, 40 g powdered sugar, a package vanilla sugar or some vanilla aroma

For the decoration: chocolate flakes

1. Preparation: grease the bottom of the baking form, put parchment paper on bottom. Preheat oven to 180°C (convection oven: 160°C)

2. Sponge cake: Beat eggs with a handmixer at highest level for about 1 min until very fluffy. Mix sugar and vanilla sugar/aroma, add to eggs in portions and keep beating for an additional 2 min. Mix flour, baking powder, cocoa powder and cinnamon; slowly add flour mix to eggs and beat at lowest setting. Add dough evenly to baking form, bake in lower third od oven for about 25 Min. Carefully remove cake from edges of the baking form, let cool down on parchment paper.

3. Shortcrust: Mix flour, baking powder and cocoa powder in a moxing bowl. Add all remaining ingredients and use knead hooks, first at lowest, then at highest setting, until it is a smooth dough. Briefly form a kugel. Add the dough to the bottom of a greased baking form, flatten out evenly, and use a fork to punch holes in the dough. Add outer rim od baking form and bake at the same settings as before for about 15 Min.

4. Carefully remove shortcrust from bottom of Springform, let cool. Carefully remove parchment paper from the sponge cake, let cool for a bit. Cut sponge cake horizontally in half (if you don't have knife that it long enough to slice the cake, use a metal wire or a cotton cord: Mark the entry point of the cord with a knife about a quarter to a third around, cutting about 1/2 inch into the cake. Evenly pull the cord from both ends until the cake is sliced).

5. Filling: Drain cherries well, and collect juice. Set aside 12 or 16 cherries to use for decoration later. Measure 250 ml of juice (add water if necessary).

6. Mix starch with sugar and 4 tablespoons of cherry juice. Heat remaining cherry juice until it boils, remove from stove, and stir in starch mixture. Return to stove and briefly bring to a boil again. Stir in cherries, let cool, and add Kirschwasser to taste. Mix gelatine with water in a small pot, let sit for 5 min. Heat gelatine slowly while stirring until dissolved. Whip heavy whipping cream together with powdered sugar and vanilla until almost stiff. Stir 2 tablespoons of the whipped cream into the gelatine mix, then immediately add gelatine to cream and whip until fully stiff.

7. Put shortcrust on a flat plate, add cherry mixture and evenly distribute on crust leaving 1/2 inch from the outer edge empty. Add 1/3 of whipped cream and even out. Put lower half of sponge cake on top slightly pushing down. Add 1/2 of remaining cream, distribute evenly, add top half of sponge cake and push carefully down.

8. Decoration: Set aside 3 tablespoons of cream. Use remaining cream to cover top and sides of cake. Use saved cream, cherries, and chocolate flakes to decorate. Cool cake for at least two hours prior to serving.

If you don't have a pastry bag and a decorating tip to decorate the cake, you can put the cream into a small sandwich plastic bag, cut a very small piece of the corner away, and use that hole to squeeze the cream out.

How it all started...

Although I have enjoyed baking for quite some time now, I hadn't been too serious about it. Well, that was until last December when I made a Black Forest Cake for Ceci's birthday. Because I had enjoyed making this cake a lot and because it didn't turn out too bad either, my New Year's resolution was to bake more, try out new recipes and variations of old ones. So this is why I am starting this blog, sharing recipes, photos and comments on my baked goods.

Most of the recipes are from the Dr. Oetker book "Backen macht Freude" (baking is fun), a true German classic, which is over 100 years old. My parents have the famous version from the 1960s, but I recently bought the 100 year anniversary version. There's also an English version available at Amazon (German baking today), but I don't know if the content is identical to the anniversary book. And then there are some recipes by family and friends that are so great I have to share them. Let me know if you have any questions or comments regarding these recipes! Enjoy!