1,000 Foods To Eat Before You Die: A Food Lover's Life List (70 page)

Malasadas may be filled with custard, fruit preserves, or chocolate cream, but they are most traditionally (and most delectably) unfilled, allowing the texture of the sunny, airy interior sponge to be fully appreciated without danger of sogginess.

Where:
In Honolulu, HI
, Leonard’s Bakery, tel 808-737-5591,
leonardshawaii.com
;
in Kohala Coast, HI
, Mauna Lani Resort, tel 808-885-6622,
maunalani.com
;
in Kailua, HI
, Agnes’ Portuguese Bake Shop, tel 808-262-5367,
agnesbakeshop.com
;
in Providence, RI
, Silver Star Bakery, tel 401-421-8013,
silverstarbakery.com
.
Further information and recipes:
The New Portuguese Table
by David Leite (2009);
saveur.com
(search leonard’s bakery malasadas).

Beaten-up cream seems a violent designation for a dessert so ethereally rich, cool, and airy as this chilled, gelatin-set custard, yet that is what
abgeschlagene
means. More elegantly described as Bavarian cream or even as a cold soufflé, it begins with air beaten into egg whites and heavy sweet cream, which inflates a sunny, sweet custard sauce of egg yolks, sugar, and white wine. Flavorings might run to fruit juices or purees, melted dark chocolate, double-brewed espresso, or pure vanilla extract, and the cloudlike dessert is invariably topped off with puffs of whipped cream, and perhaps berries or toasted almonds.

Though seemingly named for the southern German region of Bavaria, where it is indeed a favorite, the dessert is said to have made its mark as a specialty of the popular Café Procope in Paris in the early 1700s. There, it was frequently ordered by visiting Bavarian royalty—hence its French name,
crème Bavaroise
.

There are two kinds of Bavarian cream, distinguished by the method of beating up on the cream.
Feine abgeschlagene creme
, the more opulent variation, has the melted gelatin stirred into a satiny cooked custard of egg yolks and sugar.
Kaltgerührt creme
, or “cold-stirred cream,” requires no cooking and depends on a lengthy beating of egg yolks and sugar until the mixture turns thick and almost white and can hold the melted gelatin and liquid seasonings. With a leaner, less creamy finish, it allows any flavoring a more marked presence; it is the preferred method when flavoring with fruit, as opposed to coffee, vanilla, or chocolate, all of which profit from a richer base, and is especially good with lemon juice and grated rind. The latter flavorings result in the dessert called
zitronencreme
in Germany and
citronfromage
, or lemon cheese, in Denmark. With either method, the almost-set mixture can be poured into a baked and cooled piecrust and topped with whipped cream, to be served as a cold chiffon pie. But generally it is presented in a big, round crystal bowl, to be lushly spooned out into individual dishes.

Further information and recipes:
The Cuisines of Germany
by Horst Scharfenberg (1989);
The German Cookbook
by Mimi Sheraton (2014);
epicurious.com
(search bavarian cream with raspberry coulis);
foodnetwork.com
(search bavarian cream).

The Christmas tree in Lüchow’s.

Despite its Germanic origins, for New Yorkers of a certain age, the apple pancake—big, golden, and redolent of hot butter, rum, cherry brandy, and cinnamon—will always recall the magnificent restaurant Lüchow’s, just off
Union Square. With dark wood paneling, stained-glass windows, and what was said to be the world’s largest indoor Christmas tree, this art-filled monument to sophisticated
gemütlichkeit
was a meeting place for celebrities from the worlds of theater, literature, music, sports, and politics. Among its elaborate dishes, many of which were prepared tableside with graceful flamboyance, none was more frequently evident than the apple pancake. Alas, the restaurant closed in 1986. Fortunately, the pancake outlived Lüchow’s and remains as delectable as ever.

Always served for two, but with a foot-and-a-half diameter easily amounting to dessert for four, the pancake was cooked up by a deft captain on a traveling cooking trolley called a gueridon. Eggs beaten with a little flour, salt, sugar, and milk attained the consistency of heavy cream to form a batter that was poured into hot butter in a big, thin, long-handled iron skillet. Bubbling and brown, the pancake was topped with thinly sliced peeled and cored apples, and then another layer of batter was spooned over the top. Once brown on the first side, it was flipped over with nary a fold nor a tear.

The top of the pancake was dashed with cinnamon sugar and a few splashes of dark rum and/or the clear, fiery cherry brandy called
kirschwasser
, the prelude to the theatrical if anticipated moment when the dessert would be set aflame for a few seconds. The sublime appeal of caramelized cinnamon sugar and the enticing scent of burning alcohol emanated from the pancake.

The late Jan Mitchell, the urbane, highly cultured owner who raised Lüchow’s to its second great incarnation, always advised a glass of cool, sweet Château d’Yquem with this dessert. He cared so much about getting it right that he often sent one over on the house.

Popular as it was, the apple pancake was not the official Lüchow’s German Pancake. Strangely, that was the same omelet-like pancake, but minus the apples. Doused with lemon juice after being cooked, that
pfannkuchen
was rolled around
preiselbeeren
(preserved lingonberries) or hot bittersweet chocolate sauce. Not too bad an ending, either.

Where:
In Milwaukee
, Karl Ratzsch’s, tel 414-276-2720,
karlratzsch.com
;
in Venice, CA
, Röckenwagner 3 Square Café, tel 310-399-6504,
3squarecafe.com
.
Further information and recipes:
Lüchow’s German Cookbook
by Jan Mitchell (1996);
food.com
(search luchows german pancake).

The tradition of spit cakes goes back centuries.

It takes only a glance at a
baumkuchen
to understand where this “tree cake” gets its name. And after a taste of the gently sweet, almondy, moist, dense, pound cake–like pastry, you’ll also know why Germans consider it the king of cakes.
Standing from two to three feet in height, and even taller for exhibition pieces, the narrow cylindrical cake of stacked, undulating, ridged rings is hollow at the center. Sliced horizontally into rounds or arcs, it reveals concentric layers of golden brown rings, much like the rings in a tree trunk.

Those rings are the result of a most unusual baking method. Although the baumkuchen is said to have originated in nineteenth-century Germany, it belongs to a much older food category known as “spit cakes,” a term that might give pause. Fortunately,
spit
refers to a horizontal rotisserie, now powered by gas or electricity, that turns in front of or over a wood or gas fire. As the spit rotates, the baker ladles over it anywhere from ten to forty-five layers of sunny batter with the consistency of a foamy liquid custard. The batter of eggs, sugar, and either flour or cornstarch is most traditionally flavored with marzipan, although vanilla, brandy, and spices are often added—the latter remaining the closely guarded secret of the individual pastry chef.

To hold and shape the cake, the spit is fitted with a wood or metal cone wrapped in layers of parchment or aluminum foil, and preheated in the vertical baumkuchen oven that suggests a big outdoor grill. As each layer bakes, it takes on the toasty finish that defines the rings. Once all the layers are baked on, the spit is removed and hung on a rack, where the cake can take from ten to twenty-four hours to cool. It is then slipped off the spit, stood on end, and glazed with a thin white icing. Nowadays it may be coated with chocolate, which helps preserve the cake and appeals to popular tastes but does compromise the cake’s delicate flavor.

Although German bakers keep the edges of the cake smooth by holding a wooden plank against it as it turns to remove drips, in other countries the drips are allowed to bake on and form a crunchy, brambly finish. Such is the case with the Polish
sękacz
, the Lithuanian
šakotis
, and especially the Swedish
spettekaka
, so resplendent with lacy baked-on drips that it resembles a cylinder of golden spun glass.

Oddly enough, baumkuchen is a well-known confection in Japan, where it’s been widely available ever since it was introduced there by a German baker in 1919. Known for centuries in France as
gâteau à la broche
, it is still baked by a few artisans there, as well as in England, where it is called trayne roste. At times, it is part of a Tudor-period cooking demonstration in the enormous kitchen of Henry VIII’s Hampton Court.

Delicious with coffee and tea, baumkuchen also pairs beautifully with semisweet white dessert wine.

Where:
In Berlin
, Café Buchwald, tel 49/30-391-5931,
konditorei-buchwald.de
;
in Cologne
, Café Reichard, tel 0221/2-57-85-42,
cafe-reichard.de
;
in Munich
, Konditorei Kreutzkamm, tel 49/89-993-557-0,
kreutzkamm.de
;
in New York and Tokyo
, Minamoto Kitchoan,
kitchoan.com
;
in Denver
, Glaze, tel 720-387-7890,
glazebaucakes.com
;
in Huntington Beach, CA
, The Cake Box, tel 714-842-9132,
cakeboxpastries.com
.
Retail and mail order:
In Chicago
, Lutz Café and Pastry Shop, tel 877-350-7785,
chicago-bakery.com
.
Further information and recipes:
For a home-baked variation,
The German Cookbook
by Mimi Sheraton (2014);
germanculture.com.ua
(search baumkuchen).