Spitcake + Fruitcake = Spurftcake

There's an old medieval recipe for trayne roste at Historic Food dot Com! It strikes me as a hybrid spitcake, in that it's prepared a bit like baumkuchen and a bit like chimney cakes. A prepared stripe is wrapped around a spit, like chimney cakes (though here the stripe is made of fruits and nuts, not yeast cake). Then batter is dribbled onto the cake while it turns by a fire, like baumkuchen!

Historic Food claims the trayne roste is a direct ancestor of the gâteau à la broche, which is neat if it's true. Blanched almonds and dried nuts are threaded on a thread as long as a man is tall. That gets coiled around the spit and drizzled with a batter made of flour, wine or ale, ginger, sugar, saffron, cloves, salt, and other spices. AND THAT'S HOW YOU TRAYNE ROSTE.



A trayne roste, nearly done. [source]



Slices showing the cake anatomy. [ibid.]

I am conflicted about posting this recipe

I don't really like the taste of black pepper. That said, Bravo TV posted this recipe, so I'm sharing it with you!
Black Pepper Baumkuchen

• 200 grams butter
• 150 grams sugar
• 2 grams salt
• 2 grams vanilla extract
• Zest of 1 lemon
• 1 teaspoon black pepper, ground
• 80 grams yolks
• 210 grams whites
• 150 grams sugar
• 175 grams cornstarch
• 65 grams almond meal

1. Cream 1st four ingredients, beat in yolks.
2. Make meringue, fold in cornstarch.
3. Fold in dry and meringue alternating.

Nice job, chef Morgan Wilson!

I Did Eat Some Gâteaux à la Broche

I'll never outgrow this cakeblog. I will return to it every so often! However, I will find other things to do for years on end.
FIFTY-THREE WEEKS AGO, I ate a gâteau à la broche. Fifty-two weeks ago, I ate a second one, from a different place. And yet I am only getting around to discussing them now! To quote a fellow Mudd alumnus, "I am grossly incompetent."
It was a pretty fantastic weekend, a year ago. I am still a little ashamed to admit that I scheduled twenty hours of bus and train rides so I could spend eighteen hours in a little Pyrenean hamlet. It was around six in the morning when I reached Tarbes, pronounced "tau(gurgle)b". When the daily food market opened, I was there, and ready to get some spitcake!

No better way to start my day!


Cross-section of the cake the patissier was free-sampling off of.

The above pictures show cakes from Le Pic Bigourdan, which as far as I can tell is an enterprise that only sells through these farmers markets. Anyway, look at that cross-section! It belies the irregularity of this type of spitcake. The dribbled batter doesn't make coherent layers. Not in this bakery's cakes, at least...
I bought a small cake from Le Pic Bigourdan and carried on. After some misdirection and a delightful run-in with an Esperantist, I reached the Védère Café in Montgaillard, which I mentioned in my previous gâteau post! Before buying another cake, I tried a slice in their dining-car-turned-café.

Salivating.

I was surprised to see a spitcake sliced into quadrangles rather than rings! Their website shows gâteaux sliced into rings, so I can't tell which is the norm for this region and which is avant-garde presentation. And wow, I thought that other bakery's cakes had irregular layering! This is so unlike baumkuchen! What a wonderful, diverse spitcake universe exists!
I bought a cake from Védère, got smashed on some phenomenal local beers, and miraculously awoke at home in Madrid. Over the next couple of weeks, I tore down those two spitcakes with the help of friends and family.

Spitcakes, pre-teardown.


My cake from Le Pic Bigourdan.

My cake from Le Pic Bigourdan was very hearty, not too sweet, with vanilla and an indistinct liqueur flavoring. I love the appearance of the cross section.

My cake from Biscuiterie Védère.

My cake from Védère was surprisingly moist, considering how thin the cake was. A strong taste of rum and eggs, and a great texture. I wish the cake were thicker, but I don't know how that would alter its good qualities.
* * *
I chose Tarbes and Montgaillard because internet research promised I could try two cakes in one outing. Having actually gone to the area, I discovered I likely could have gotten gâteaux from the town of Pau, or Lourdes, or Lannemezan, or probably any of the towns with markets (read: ALL OF THEM).

Closing this post with a pretty scene!

Le Gâteau à la Broche

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

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

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

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.