Baumkuchen Blog

Le Gâteau à la Broche

2011-03-30T06:52:00.000-07:00

Every so often, I go back to the Wikipedia pages on spitcakes for various reasons. On the šakotis page, I saw the following new addition to the page: "In France, it is known as gâteau à la broche and is mostly found in the Massif Central and Pyrenees, especially in Aveyron where it is a very popular party dessert."

Gâteau à la broche? A French take on a Lithuanian cake? I'd never heard of such a thing! So I got on my trusty Internet machine and off I went. I found a fair amount of basic information right away, but a lot of details are still elusive. For example, why did I not know about this sooner? Where is the closest place where I can obtain this pastry? Anyway, here's what I do know:

Gâteau à la broche is native to the French half of the Pyrenees, though it is also made in some isolated parts of central France and a little squirt of Basque country. Like its cousins in the spitcake family, it was traditionally made only for extra-special occasions, like when rich people get married. Also like its cousins, it has become available outside of rich people's weddings—although as far as I can tell, in the case of gâteau à la broche, its reach has only extended to a handful of farmer's markets in tiny towns that are practically inaccessible without a car. That's not a huge deterrent, though. I can hitch-hike. I think I could feasibly obtain one of these!

Gâteaux for sale! [source]

A cut-away section. Much more irregular layering. [ibid.]

How it's made! See the resemblance to the Lithuanian version? [source]

A giant cake that also shows a resemblence to the Lithuanian version. [source]

A cake even bigger than the giant šakotis! I'm looking for more info, but so far I've got nothing. Also, a stuffed tiger. [source]

Chimney Cake

2011-03-12T05:58:00.000-08:00

Did I mention that I'm in Spain right now? I don't think I did. Anyway, that's where I am this semester, which opens some new cake-related doors.

Well, in February I went to Budapest, home to its very own spitcake called kürtőskalács, or "chimney cake." It's quite unlike baumkuchen and šakotis! Instead of layers of batter, it's made by rolling out a long, thin strip of sweet dough (kürtőskalács is a yeast cake). This gets wound onto a conical form, so you get a nice tapered tube. The dough is dusted with sugar and stuck in a special kürtőskalács oven, which spins multiple individual cakes, each on its own spindle. The result is a sweet, dense, bready pastry with a thin crispy shell of tasty burnt sugar. When it's taken off of the conical form, the cake can stand upright, fragrant steam pouring out the top, leaving no doubt how it got its name. While still hot, there's the option of dusting the cake with a topping of your choice—traditionally, walnuts or more sugar, but other options include cocoa powder, cinnamon, dried coconut, or vanilla. Some places even make savory kürtőskalács, topping them with meats and cheeses and savory herbs and spices!

And it's cheap, too! In Budapest's Nyugati Pályaudvar, there's a shop that sells nothing but chimney cake at 380 forint (1.90 USD).

A modern kürtőskalács oven. [source]

A more traditional way of baking chimney cake. But not too traditional; observe the axle motors on the back wall of the grill. Also, notice the helical structure from the way the dough is coiled. [source]

Baked and flavored cakes! Oh lordy, that looks good. [source]

Time to right some wrongs

2011-02-25T13:27:00.000-08:00

It's the year 2011. Let's do some cake blogging.

On June 13, 2010, I promised I would put up a translation of the Russian-language news video. What's more, I promised I would do in under 24 hours. Welp, it's been eight and a half months, might as well post a translation now.

Here's the gist. The story starts talking about the history of the cake. Some king spilled sugar onto some bread (which was on a rotisserie for some reason?). That...that's not a very good history, guys. Whatever. It's traditionally a wedding cake, and this one is over 50 kilograms. It took over five hours of constant turning and batter-pouring to make. It's got cognac in it for flavoring. 1200 eggs went into the batter. It's 12 cm larger than their last cake, although it's not specified if that means radius, diameter, or axial length.

Next order of business: on May 27, 2008, I promised further developments on the antique cake machine thing. Well, here's what I remember. It works in a standard kitchen oven, with the door open and the broiler on. The set is cast-iron, with two stands and a spit with hand crank. One of the stands goes in the oven, and the other goes with the batter. Rest the spit on the not-in-the-oven stand. Put some batter on the spit, put the spit on the stand in the oven, and start turning. Move spit back to the other stand, repeat process. It's very messy, and I bet the open oven with broiler on is miserable.

BAM! I GET THINGS DONE! ...Kind of.

Sweet Tree Bakery, London, England

2010-08-12T01:08:00.000-07:00

I spent a big part of Saturday, July 24 making my way from Charlton (way down south) to Wood Green (way the crap up north). Why? Sweet Tree Bakery, baby! Possibly the only spitcakery in the British Isles, it makes both baumkuchen and šakotis! How could I miss this?

Sweet Tree Bakery is hardcore. They cultivate natural yeast for about half of their breads, utilizing all sorts of tasty fruits and grains to make every loaf special. Two Bavarian ladies are in charge of the breads and jams, and a Japanese man bakes the pastries, including the spitcakes. None of them are native Anglophones; they all speak with incredibly thick accents, and they were unable to understand my dialect (American plus difficulty with liquids). This led to a great game of telephone: I would ask a question in my dialect, then another customer (a gentleman in a Mr. Bungle t-shirt, I will refer to him as Mr. Bungle) would repeat the question in one of the London dialects, then one of the bakers would answer and I would have to spend about twenty seconds analyzing their speech for comprehension. But I digress. How were the spitcakes?

Well, I only had baumkuchen. It's true that STB bakes both varieties, but only one kind per day. I happened to arrive on a baumkuchen day. If I had gone there on Friday, or if I came back again on Sunday, I could have gotten šakotis.

Was it good? Oh yes. Oh. Yes. The cake itself was just a little sweet, the icing mellow, the texture out of this world. I thought it got better with every bite. That baker puts all his effort into making the best product possible, and it shows, man.

After some more fumbling with words and having Mr. Bungle act as interpreter, they agreed to let me into the kitchen and see the cake machine as long as I didn't touch anything. Oh, joy unbounded!

There it is, in all its glory. The Cake Machine. An angelic chorus is singing. This machine was manufactured by Schlee GmbH. It's electric, as you can see, and relies on three-phase power, presumably for the large motor.

Do you see that huge fan behind the oven? It's not the only one. There was an array of fans, I think five, along that wall, spinning their little hearts out. And it was still so damn hot in that room! Definitely over 40°C (100°F).

So now I'm a little worried about a cake machine in a van. For one thing, three-phase is out of the question. And unless I've got all the doors thrown open, I might cook myself in there, alongside the cake. Vamos a ver.

My heating element will be electric.

2010-08-05T00:50:00.000-07:00

Heating elements: electric.

Photos of my cake adventure in England will follow. For now, check out this diagram I made.

Return to the Baby George Rotisserie

2010-06-25T15:21:00.000-07:00

I've been talking about cake on this blog since April 2008. Since then, I think I've made it clear that I'm not very good at research, design, construction, baking, or blogging. But I'm always making progress, no matter how slight or how slow!

There's so much information out there. I just get bothered when I realize that I could have theoretically avoided pitfalls years ago with only a modicum of effort. And this happens often! I could have saved myself a lot of trouble if I had just seen the following site when I began.

Baumkuchen USA is the mail-order business of some dude named Klaus in Piqua, Ohio. He ships baumkuchen that he bakes himself "in a custom built rotisserie." But look at the pictures on his site:

That is clearly a Ronco Showtime Rotisserie! I have no idea what customizations there are in his machine (if any), but it looks like he's baking baumkuchen in a perfectly normal rotisserie. I think this means I could have potentially been baking baumkuchen since Cake Weekend in December 2008.

As always, I'm making up for lost time. I gave the George Foreman rotisserie a thorough cleaning, inside and out, then pulled off some spikes on the spit itself to make it more cake-friendly. More to follow! Stay tuned.

Šakotis update

2010-06-13T12:04:00.000-07:00

That video I posted yesterday was a little confusing to me. I couldn't figure out why the chefs were spinning the cake so fast! Well, now I have my answer. As more layers are added, the baker spins the cake faster, causing flecks of batter to fly off and form peaks. Wow.

I'm not going to lie: compared to baumkuchen, šakotis seems more challenging, more impressive, and more fun to bake. It all adds to the respect I have for the people who made that giant šakotis.

Also, if you look at the pictures in the above link, you can clearly see electric heating elements! Good to know.

Amazing thing

2010-06-13T01:07:00.001-07:00

Remember when I posted a link to that giant šakotis? I've located a Russian news story on it!. At the moment I'm just admiring the video, but I promise I'll have a translation later today.

Looking at the size of the fires that are used to bake these spitcakes makes me realize just how badly I underestimated the amount of fuel I needed for my most recent test. I just keep getting more and more ashamed of that day.

(Skip to 41 seconds into the video if you just want to see the cake.)

Failed cake day!

2010-06-09T01:15:00.000-07:00

Today was a failed cake day. That doesn't mean today was a failed day, though, just that the cakes involved were failures. Read on to find out what I learned!

The original plan was to bake a proper spitcake, outside, over hot coals. The recipe I used was from germanculture.com.ua. We begin the slideshow with the grill I had:

After a few hours of tender loving, I got the grill into a usable state:

I fitted that wire grate because I only wanted charcoal in that front section. The reasoning here was that the rotisserie would be located just in front of that section, so why bother heating the rest of the grill?

I assembled some spit holders out of PVC stakes and elbow joints (I know, PVC was a totally retarded choice, but it's what I had on hand), made a nice charcoal pile, and conflagrated it.

As the coals got hot, I set up the spit itself, wrapping a damp cloth around the dowel. Then I waited to see if the coals would get hotter.

They didn't. This setup just didn't put out enough heat to bake a cake. But I'd already prepared a ton of batter! I couldn't let it go to waste, so I made a flatkuchen.

The flatkuchen didn't turn out great, like the first one did two years ago, but I still learned a lot! I found that a double-boiler is a great way to heat up the batter, thereby making it runnier and easier to spread. I also undercooked most of the layers, so maybe I *do* need to let them get golden-brown before putting on the next layer. Here's a cross-section for you to admire:

Cake!

Cake machine heating elements

2010-06-02T15:42:00.000-07:00

I still want to build a cake machine, it's true. The major impetus to actually doing so is that I don't know the best way to provide heat. My options are electric, gas, and wood. I wish I could consult some heating experts, but I don't know any. I tried wandering into a grill-and-fireplace supply store this afternoon, but the clerks were not helpful at all. Tragisch.

ELECTRIC HEATING
Electric heating has been recommended by some people. My small-scale tests with electric heaters suggested that they can probably get a full-size oven up to the operating temperature range. Unfortunately, I have no idea what to do from here. There are so many kinds of electric heaters and I don't know where to get ones that are the appropriate size and shape for my rather specific application! Some of the Schlee GmbH machines use infrared bulbs, so I think I would do likewise. But I don't know exactly what I'm looking for in a bulb, so I could end up throwing my money away.

GAS HEATING
Gas is quicker to start than electric heating. I could stop it and restart it when I need to open the oven and apply batter. But I'm more likely to blow myself up. The Schlee machines that don't use electric use something called "infrared gas heating" and I can't find any good resources on this. There are plenty of resources on how to make pipe burners that I could use, but again, I run the risk of blowing myself up.

WOOD OR CHARCOAL HEATING
Wood fires are the traditional heat source for baumkuchen. But I'm worried that it might compromise the taste! I do not know if this is a valid concern. This is probably also a lot easier to get started with now, and I could eventually graduate to a gas or electric heater later.

Now, onto the issue of getting a metal drum for my oven!

On Cake Box cake expiry

2010-05-27T23:55:00.000-07:00

My family ate about 2/3 of that baumkuchen I bought in January. We stowed the remainder in an airtight container in our freezer. Now, four and a half months later, we've pulled it out to celebrate my return from another successful semester at school. It's still moist, still delicious, and it didn't give me food poisoning. I feel that it's reasonable to say that your Cake Box baumkuchen will keep in the freezer for at least 5 months!

I take no responsibility if you take this advice and become ill.

2010-01-12T23:29:00.000-08:00

Why, what's this bag?

Why, it appears to be a cake!

An hours-old, hand-made baumkuchen from a generations-old recipe and a generations-old oven!

This photos are of the cake I got from the Cake Box, taken right after I left. I need to reiterate that it was way tastier than its machine-made Japanese counterparts.

On Scalability, Infinite

2010-01-02T22:37:00.000-08:00

Anyone with an obsession will get asked, "Why?" It's unavoidable. I don't have a great answer for why I love rotisserie cakes. However, I've got a few rationalizations: the novelty, the effort required, the infinite scalability.

Infinite scalability?

Yeah, this is the one that I have had the hardest time explaining to people. The diameter of your rotisserie cake is limited only by how tall your baking area is. The length of your rotisserie cake is limited only by how long your baking area is. We could theoretically build incredibly long ovens, churning out fifty-foot-long spitcakes, and/or incredibly voluminous ovens, producing cake monsters that are wider than you are tall. Giant cakes.

I never had a really good picture to illustrate this concept, until tonight. Ethan R. found the picture that I've always wanted (but never thought existed). It's part of a story about Lithuanians (my people!) baking a world-record Šakotis. Šakotis is the Lithuanian rotisserie cake! The primary difference between it and baumkuchen is that šakotis batter is dribbled unevenly onto a conical form, and baumkuchen batter is brushed evenly onto a cylindrical form. But I digress.

Look at that. It is the 67.4 kg (148.6 lb), 2.3 m long (7.5 ft), .5 m diameter (1.6 ft) triumph of pastrydom.

Original article

Returned from Cake Box

2010-01-02T20:46:00.000-08:00

Cake Box is a fantastic place. A very European shop with very European service. I immediately purchased a large chunk of chocolate-glazed baumkuchen, then spent about twenty minutes just chatting with the proprietors. Chef Paul Gauweiler is probably the only Baumkuchen artisan within 2000 kilometers, and I got to chat with him and his wife/sous-chef! They were unabashedly excited to learn that there are youths who want to keep the traditional Baumkuchen-making methods alive.

Their baumkuchen oven, an 80 year old dual-gas-electric machine, sits in the corner of the shop, in plain view. They wouldn't let me take pictures, but it did look an awful lot like a 55-gallon metal drum slit lengthwise.

Anyway, the cake. It was much moister than the flatkuchen Eidolon and I made earlier, but the flavor was about the same (in other words, phenomenal). The layers were just a wee bit thinner than ours were, but still much larger and more uneven than the Japanese machine-made ones. Overall, it makes me think that I could make Baumkuchen if I really tried!

Cake Box, Huntington Beach, CA

2009-11-25T22:39:00.001-08:00

The Nov. 23 2009 issue of The New Yorker has a short filler piece about Baumkuchen. Oh my gaaaawwwwwd. It's a little rambly, but it explains the taste and introduces others who share my passion for rotisserie cakes.

Oh, by the way, remember me? I used to post about my cake obsession here. Hi.

Right. Anyway. The article started to rekindle my desire for my own Baumkuchen oven! It also announced that there is a location in Orange County where one can observe a Baumkuchen in construction. It's called The Cake Box, and I am super-stoked to visit there some day when I have an entire afternoon free. When's the next time I will have an entire afternoon free? Probably some time in 2010. Hooray college!

Works cited: Sheraton, Mimi. "Spit Cake." The New Yorker 23 Nov. 2009: 54-57. Print.

Remember me?

2009-03-10T18:52:00.000-07:00

Oh, hey guys. I'm still around. College pretty much destroys any opportunity to have Project Time.

In the time since cake weekend—which was LAST YEAR—I've gotten cleared to use the machine shop and I've snagged some nice insulation to keep my operations toasty. It's possible that I'll be able to use that instead of extra heating elements (see last post) to get that Baby George rotisserie up to the necessary 250°C.

In the meantime, I have a new Engineering Design project to work on for the final quarter of the school year! My team of four is doing something (not sure exactly what yet) regarding clay cookstoves in Malawi. Efficient heat movement is important! It sounds like I can maybe learn things that also apply to baking cakes. Win/Win!

Cake Weekend Day 1

2008-12-28T03:49:00.000-08:00

THIS WEEKEND IS CAKE WEEKEND

THE ORIGINAL DECISION WAS THAT BY THE END OF THIS WEEKEND THERE WOULD BE A CAKE MACHINE BUILT

MUCH ENTHUSIASM IS NEEDED

I AM SO ENTHUSIASTIC I CANNOT TURN OFF CAPSLOCK

Okay, enough of that. Here's the documentation.

Day 1: Saturday

Saturday began with Raymond driving over with a George Foreman desktop rotisserie. We had determined the night prior that finishing the full-size cake oven would definitively be impossible, as we had yet to find a satisfying balance of light weight, low cost, and sufficient strength. We settled for making a smaller oven using a readily available rotisserie assembly—as a prototype, mind you, and nothing else—and perhaps a tiny cake.

It looks like a cheap temperature sensor, but hey, it goes all the way to 300°C (571°F) which is great for an application where the optimum temperature is 240-260°C (464-500°F). Oh geez it's displaying Fahrenheit whoops how did that happen.

Tinsnips! This is to make a hole for the temperature sensor.

Pieces folded back, hole punched with an awl.

Hmmm...

Well, let's see what's inside.

Oh hey look at that, the oven's reassembled! It's all ready to go and we can see at what temperature the rotisserie peaks. If we can easily get it up to 250°C, we are good!

Oh geez it's still reading Fahrenheit.

The oven peaked around 207°C (405°F), which is NOT YET HOT ENOUGH.

Well, if we can fit another heating element in there, it should get to 250°C just fine, right? Raymond shows me that bending a heating element (such as the one in the bottom right corner of this picture) shorts it out and renders it useless. My bad. I guess we need something more compact...

The solution is more George Foreman! $5 and a quick trip down the block lands us the Lean Mean Something Something.

Here it's been gutted and the heating elements extracted.

These compact little guys will be mounted, one on each side wall of the oven. Did that make sense? I mean here:

...and here:

To fasten them on, we create little aluminium brackets which will be screwed onto the sides shown above.

Side view of bracket.

At this point, it was kind of late and time for Raymond to depart. And neither of us will have much time for cake weekend on Sunday, so it looks like cake weekend is a bust. Well, significant progress was made, I guess. Good thing I still have half a store-bought 'kuchen in the fridge.

Partial success!

Things to remember for next time

Raymond. Dude. Check your tyre pressure.

That's about it, really. The rest of this is more or less flyin' blind with no preparations.

What the engineering profs have to say

2008-11-25T22:31:00.000-08:00

Here's the feedback I've gotten recently:

It must be electric. Amateur gas pipes mean propane will accumulate at the top of the box, which is way bad.

Ceramic bulbs for heating and fireclay for insulation. YES.

Depending on the motors being used, it may be best to connect the motor to the spit with a bike chain? It is not difficult to cut sprockets for those so speed control should be much simpler this way. Watch your fingers.

One of the traditional recipes I had been looking at (I should make a post for traditional recipes later) is extremely bitter tasting and should not be trusted at all.

With fireclay, weight will be an issue, especially with mobility.

Safety features! Digital temperature sensors are apparently pretty simple to implement? Also there absolutely must be emergency vents if the oven area gets too hot or any of the structural integrity is compromised.

Make many more drafts and don't get too attached to any of them.

CAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAKE

CAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAKE

2008-11-25T21:57:00.001-08:00

CAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAKE

Oh, that helps. It like a primal war-cry to get me back into the cake mood. For the last two months or so I've been on an ice cream tangent, making flavours like vanilla, ginger, bacon...mostly bacon. So now, I'm back.

CAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAKE

Not dead

2008-09-07T22:27:00.000-07:00

In college, not trusted with the wood or metal shops here yet. I think I started this blag preëmptively, because it's been almost six months and I've yet to build anything that really helps with cake.

Today!

2008-08-13T21:06:00.000-07:00

Today I converted two people to the Cult of the Rotisserie Cake, or Drehspießkuchenkult, and drafted a new image. It has no bottom, so batter drips fall and be caught and reused. It's made of refractory cement, electrically heated (optimally), and has extra space on the top to accommodate a ladle full of batter. Refractory cement definitely seems like the best solution. Way better than steel. Though a steel skin on the outside is good.

Mmm, Kultkuchen.

beep

2008-08-02T00:58:00.000-07:00

...And I'm back from a month in Spain. Is the cake project alive? Yes. Has progress been made? Not really, no.

This seems doable, guys

2008-06-14T23:58:00.001-07:00

This is a delightfully simple baumkuchen rig. And it's from Los Angeles!

Errata

2008-06-14T22:47:00.001-07:00

I have some errata on the early posts. Regarding Preparatory Research, oven.jp has changed its catalogue and presently offers only the UA-343 model. Regarding my introduction, there are people who make rotisserie baumkuchen at home. At the very least, there is one person who does. I now know of a friend's friend's mother who makes the cakes on an antique German contrivance. However, reports on the quality of her 'kuchen has been less than stellar. Clearly something is wrong. Nevertheless, she will be my best new source of information when she returns from holiday this August!

...Crap, I can't wait that long. I'll continue flyin' blind in the meantime.

EDIT EDIT EDIT: About ten minutes after writing this post, I recalled that I hadn't actually searched for antique baumkuchen ovens for more information. Lo and behold, I'm already Google's #1 stop for baumkuchen antiques. Is this a victory for me or a failure for mankind?

Genuine progress!

2008-06-13T14:27:00.001-07:00

So I got and dismantled a camping stove. Now I have a variable propane regulator and a decent burner! Unfortunately, it's only about 16 inches long, so it needs a smaller case. I'll look for a small metal drum.

Now I have a good idea for spinning the spit! Imagine two rubber wheels on each end, outside of the oven itself, spinning slowly in the same direction. The wooden spit can rest on top of them and spin at a similar rate. This way I don't have to worry about hooking gears into the spit itself; all the chains and necessary things are attached to the wheel rig. However, I'd have to make two wheel rigs, one for the oven and one for applying batter.

Another interlude: 15-minute chocolate cake

2008-06-02T18:50:00.000-07:00

I made a cake in the microwave. It took about 15 minutes, and it was so good that my cooking instructor literally stole the recipe from me so she can make it for her family. I take that as a good omen.

It's based off of this recipe but there are a few glaring changes. For example, I tripled the quantity of sugar used. This is not a typo.

So, ingredients:

1/4 pound (1 stick) unsalted butter
1 cup regular granulated sugar
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
7 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
2 eggs, beaten
1 tablespoon sour cream

So, you melt the stick of butter and add the sugar and stir well. In another bowl, sift together the flour, cocoa powder, and baking powder. Let the butter and sugar cool a little bit so the eggs don't cook when you add them in. Mix in the eggs and the sour cream. Add all that to the dry ingredients and mix until as smooth as possible.

Pour into a microwave-safe bowl that's been buttered and floured on the sides or something, some measure to prevent sticking. Cover it tightly with plastic wrap and then cut some slits to allow steam to escape. Microwave it for 3-4 minutes. I ran mine for 3:30 and it turned out beautifully.

Oh, and be sure to let it cool before you take it out of the bowl or else it will crumble and you will be sad.

Interlude - Kek Lapis Sarawak

2008-05-27T22:41:00.001-07:00

It's finals time and I've almost graduated from high school, so baumkuchen machining has been shelved for now. However! I have made minor progress. I now have a working propane camp stove which, despite having a lame burner, might have the regulator I need. I also learned that one of my Internet Friends has a grandmother with an antique German baumkuchen oven that she still uses from time to time. More will come of these developments later.

For now, however, I have an interlude. You see, baumkuchen isn't the only cake baked in a special way. It's not even the only cake baked on a rotisserie: similar or nearly identical cakes exist in Serbian, Croatian, Swedish, Lithuanian, and Czech cultures. Other cakes not made in the traditional manner (I really need a better term for that, don't I?) include cakes resembling flatkuchen or cake-rings molded to make giant cake cornucopias with fruit inside. Even others, such as Vietnamese bánh, are steamed or fried.

But possibly the most impressive untraditional cake (Hey, "untraditional cake". That's kind of an okay term. Maybe I'll think of a better one before the end of the post.) is the Malaysian Kek Lapis Sarawak. It is many precisely cut layers of cake cemented together to make a smartly arranged pattern or picture. The woman responsible for making these famous, Rabiah Amit, has already published three recipe books. They're all in Malay but dammit, it is tempting to buy them! If I could learn to make these and good baumkuchen I could become an untraditional cake messiah.

(Original image from www.keklapissarawak.com)

How does it taste? Well, I'm assuming it tastes similar to its simpler English variant, Battenberg cake, a tea cake which I have made a few times and which I can assure you is terrific. It bodes well for Kek Lapis Sarawak.

A shopping list

2008-05-16T00:03:00.000-07:00

(The following line may very quickly become the opening of every post)

I'm dumb.

This whole time I've been ignoring Dorkbot. I lurk on the SoCal mailing list. Lo and behold, there's someone there who makes Rubens' tubes, which are pretty much fancy burners. He knows all about propane and safety issues!

So I sent out a call for help, and he sent me some good information. So now I am coming up with another shopping list for my next expedition. I'm resorting to spending money since the nearest free gas BBQ on Craigslist appears to be in Sacramento.

Shopping list presently:

Propane regulator

1″ pipe, either EMT (electrical conduit) or black iron

Appropriate pipe fittings

I'm probably missing something which means I will start my next post with "I'm dumb." again. Ah well, c'est la vie.

The Dream.

2008-05-02T15:06:00.000-07:00

I envision a day where I could have a baumkuchen oven in the back of, say, a Chevy Astro.

You know, like an ice cream truck, except selling cake instead of drugs.

Bakeries/pastry shops seem like they would be pretty easy to make portable; one could use a similar vehicle setup for regular cakes, hotcakes, cookies, breads, &c. These would probably be better suited for a confined space like a van because the ovens can be smaller, but I still think this would be the best way to introduce baumkuchen to the most people.

There's not much content I can add right now. Craigslist has offered up a few potential parts sources that I will check out this weekend.

Rough drafts

2008-04-24T20:06:00.000-07:00

Every time I make a new draft, I look at my old ones and think, "Holy hell, that's stupid and way too convoluted." Each new version is simpler than the last, but I still haven't settled on one to make.

Version 1 I made as similar as possible in appearance to the Japanese machines I saw on YouTube. I envisioned a sliced-open metal drum with the gear motor and rotisserie on that axle. The pipe in the back is a gas starter pipe like those in fireplaces. Huh. I forgot that I had originally wanted gas heat.

The next version was very similar, but only moved on one axis. In retrospect, this is really worse than the first draft, because it has to slide and makes more moving parts. There's no gas pipe shown, but I'm sure I was still thinking gas heat at this stage.

Then, somehow, I got obsessed with this shape:

I started making plans for a hollow trapezoidal prism with electric heaters on the inside of the three rectangular faces. In smaller models, this could be picked up and placed over the rotisserie, which would mean no axle needed.

This was also a dumb move, just because the shape is so awful. Now, my current line of thinking is a rectangular prism and propane burner.

(Not shown: Rails to hold the rotisserie bar in place) One day, that will surely look hella stupid too.

Craigslist

2008-04-18T16:57:00.000-07:00

Having drawn up many oven plans and obnoxiously pestered wiser friends for consultation, I am prepared to obtain some of the items needed for the oven. Since I do not know the exact design of my eventual oven, there are only a few parts I know for sure I can purchase. One of them is a gas starter with propane tank.

Craigslist is an incredible resource. Were I to buy a gas starter by itself at OSH, it would run me around $30. However, on Craigslist I can find an entire gas grill for the same price or less! All that matters is that the gas starter works. The rest of the thing can be used for sheet metal or something.

Another thing I'll certainly need but haven't been able to find on Craigslist yet is a powerful gear motor that turns about 30-40 rpm. This has proven to be extremely elusive, and I may have to build my own rig with a bicycle gear.

I'm wondering how to make the track the rotisserie moves on. In the professional Japanese models, the cake arcs up into the oven and down into the batter receptacle. However, that would be especially difficult for an amateur like me, so I am still considering a linear track. It might be easiest to just have two pipes for the rotisserie spit to balance on.

Next time, blueprints!

Flatkuchen

2008-04-18T00:16:00.000-07:00

As explained on germanculture.ua, baumkuchen can be made at home. However, instead of a log with rings, it looks like a stack of flapjacks.

It's made in a springform pan on the top rack of an oven set to "broil." An esteemed compatriot and I created one such flatkuchen in early April, or perhaps late March. Despite our overly casual approach to baking, it came out an entirely delicious learning experience.

Our version was slightly different than the one featured above, however. For one, we used no almond bits nor lemon rind; for another, covered in chocolate icing rather than apricot jam. Additionally, we had no electric mixer. Rather than beating stiff eight egg whites by hand, we, being the lazy sumbitches that we are, stuck them in a blender for a few minutes and then folded that mess into the rest of the batter.

We learned some things from the experience:

The inner layers do not need to turn golden brown. This will only dry out the cake unnecessarily.

Heating the batter up a little will make it run better, which makes it easier to deliver thin, even layers.

Even if there are uneven lumps in the cake as it forms, one must cover the previous layer entirely or else it will get burnt and nasty.

Preparatory Research

2008-04-16T18:32:00.000-07:00

So I obviously needed to figure out what I was building before I built it. This was surprisingly difficult because the vast majority of the information presently on the internet is in Japanese. Baumkuchen is a very popular pastry in Japan and as far as I tell can only be found in Japanese markets in the United States.

The first place to check is Wikipedia! I don't know what to say about Wikipedia except that reading it first is the best introduction to the cake.

The closest things I could find to cake oven plans were this video and this video. They display how the batter is applied and shows the rotors spinning at about 40 rpm.

I also found two recipes: a Japanese one here and a simpler German one here. I can't read the first link, but I've made the second one as a delicious flatkuchen (which will be explained in a later post as well).

I also did hunt for professionally-made baumkuchen ovens for inspiration. Again, I was handicapped by my being monolingual. A friend helped me contact several Japanese companies to ask for price quotes. Koyo Machinery Co. sells a behemoth that apparently makes 12 baumkuchens at a time, but they would not respond to my e-mails. Fuji Syokai has what I think is the best oven for noncommercial use, but they are rather enigmatic; I could not locate a website or even an e-mail address. I sent them a fax request for a price quote and received nothing back. At the very bottom of its catalogue page, oven.jp shows two of the three oven models they sell. The one not displayed, UA-431, is presently out of stock. They would not give me any information on MA-111. UA-343 is 680,000 JPY before shipping costs.

Edit: Oh man, I just noticed that UA-343 is, in fact, manufactured by the mysterious Fuji Syokai and sold by oven.jp. Sweet!

After that, I started designing ovens. But first I had to make my own flatkuchen.

The Introduction

2008-04-15T14:39:00.000-07:00

Sometime around October 2007, I discovered baumkuchen through Wikipedia's list of cakes. It instantly attracted my attention because of the novelty of baked goods on a rotisserie. Plus, it's theoretically infinitely scalable: with the right equipment one could potentially make a cake as long and as thick as desired.

I finally tasted baumkuchen on January 3, 2008. I got a slice from some Japanese marketplace in Sydney, and hot damn, it was incredible. Surely I would have to get my own baumkuchen oven.

I found a few ovens for sale (links will come in a later post), but most of the manufacturers would not talk to me. The one studio that did give me a price quote listed their cheapest model as ¥680.000 sans shipping. That seemed insane for an Angelino such as myself; the only option was to make my own oven.

Now, I'm not very good at designing simple things. My mind is always in terrible disarray, with half-baked ideas flying every which way. That's the reason why I started this blog: to organise my thoughts and provide direction in a hobby I believe I am pioneering.

Of course, I could be completely wrong about the "pioneering a hobby" bit. I know next to nothing about baumkuchen and the other related rotisserie cakes, nor their place in European and Japanese cultures. Maybe people make the rotisserie versions at home somehow? Perhaps there are millions of people out there who would fall over laughing at my naïveté and ignorance.

Ah well. Here's to a successful baumkuchen oven! Eventually!