THREE CAKES, TWO DAYS, PART THREE: Taste Testing

Soon we arrived in North Carolina to try the still-fresh cakes with Theo, my good buddy and host. It was time to give the cakes a proper and thorough tasting!



Okay, so the video isn't really the "proper and thorough tasting," more of a precursor. Good thing I took detailed notes, because I'm writing this up like ten months after the fact. The whole affair drove home the point that there is an impressive variety possible in rotisserie cake-baking. Artisanal one-off baumkuchens and vacuum-sealed Japanese-grocery-store baumkuchens are incomparable, it's true. But how do you compare baumkuchen and šakotis and gâteau à la broche?

Well, let's start by fawning over the two baumkuchens that were on that table. Herr Taesler's cake was a treat for its nuanced flavoring. It was not as sweet as cakes often are, which made room for subtle flavors to come through. Rum, vanilla, almond, butter, and fruit notes played in harmony as we chewed and pontificated. The Lutz baumkuchen, meanwhile, stood out for its luxurious texture. The flavor was fairly uniform, sweet and rum-like, but the cake was moist and texturally decadent in a way that only layer-by-layer cake baking can achieve.

This was my first proper šakotis, too! I was not expecting it to be so thin! As a result it was dry and crunchy. I'm not sure how typical that thinness is. The Pyrenean gâteaux I saw varied greatly in thickness, so I'm hesitant to judge all šakotis by this one's dimensions. The flavor was eggy, like a cookie that would pair well with a strong coffee on a winter morning. Mmmm.

All in all, a very good day!

There's a baumkuchen bakery in Denver!

A new baumkuchen bakery is on the scene! It's called Glaze Baum Cakes. I wonder what was the logic behind the partial Anglicization of the name. Maybe I'll have to drive out and ask in person...

Excellent Toaster Oven Baumkuchen from Japan

Before I finish my story of the three cakes, here's a two-part video of a Japanese DIY job featuring an excellent overdramatic musical selection!

THREE CAKES, TWO DAYS, PART TWO: Piqua, Ohio

I rather like the candidness in this photo.

I've mentioned Herr Taesler before. Last July I actually got to meet him! I think we were both equally excited about the encounter, because it meant a rare opportunity to discuss an odd interest in person.

The tour of baumkuchen Mecca began, of course, in the kitchen. Hr. Taesler doesn't use a Ronco Rotisserie, as I first supposed--it's a similar product, but reaches a higher top temperature. Klaus has special modifications for his tapered baumkuchen forms (below, you can see one artfully bound in string, a traditional tying method that helps the first layers adhere). He described the heat from the near-constantly open oven as physically taxing, especially in the summer; fortunately, most of his orders come near Christmastime. There's a lot of finessing and tweaking to make sure the cakes turn out superbly. He gave me a lot of practical advice: The first layers' adhesion is critical. There's nothing worse than seeing a nearly-done cake fall apart in the oven. As soon as you can, wrap the fully-baked cake in plastic wrap so it stays moist while cooling. Try making multiple batters with different flavorings and alternate which one you use on each layer.

Everything about the experience gave a mystical sense of passing on a dying craft.







We continued talking over tea. The Taeslers shared with us some hearty homemade black bread, and showed off an antique Swiss crossbow so big that it took two soldiers to load it. Naturally, we tried some of his baumkuchen here too. The fresh cream and chocolate ganache filling the center were heavenly, and the flavors that ring out in the cake itself were, to me, strong reminders of the vast differences between artisanal hand-made baumkuchen and automated robot baumkuchen. It was a terrific day.

The cakes themselves get a fuller analysis in the next post!

THREE CAKES, TWO DAYS, PART ONE: Chicago

Opportunities for spitcake tourism are few and far between, so three cakes in two days is something special. Maybe a record! Definitely a record for "hardest trip to explain to my roommates."

My last day in Chicago, at the height of summer, was my day to get spitcakes with my copilot (who is also named Sam). I knew that Chi-tonw was home to Lutz Café, up by Horner Park, and Racine in the Polish-Lithuanian southwest side.



The display of Lutz baumkuchen available to-go.



Racine šakotis/raguolis in its protective plastic wrap.

Lutz Café, which offers baumkuchen, is very much a restaurant and tea room. Racine is rather a specialty supermarket which happens to have šakotis (which they call raguolis, equally valid). Both places bake their cakes on-site, though only Lutz has the option of eating it there. Most are packaged up and sold just like a mass-produced confection. This seemed unjust to me, but I didn't have much time to dwell on it. Sam and I splurged on cakes, loaded them into a cooler, and early next morning set off for a little hamlet in Ohio, to meet a man who needs no introduction...

It is abundantly clear that my time management skills are poor

NINE MONTHS AGO, I engaged in a trans-America roadtrip with several stops just for spitcakes. I'm going to split this story into several posts, but they are going to go up THIS WEEKEND.