Baumkuchen (Layered Tree Cake)

Variations

• German by origin, but the claim is disputed. ko.wikipedia defines it as "a spit cake originating in Germany" and names Salzwedel in Saxony-Anhalt as the likely birthplace. The same article also records the case for descent from the Hungarian kürtőskalács, a recipe already printed in Marx Rumpolt's cookbook of 1581, and cakes wound onto a log in ancient Greece and Rome. This page files it under Germany because the name and the modern form are German, and states the dispute rather than hiding it.
• Properly it turns on a spit. A professional bakery pours batter onto a rotating rod in front of a flame, so the cake comes out as a cylinder and the rings are concentric. At home you spread each layer into a tin, so the rings run across instead. Same principle, same taste, different shape. A ring tin, as in the photograph, gets you closer to the traditional wreath.
• Schichttorte is the German cake that takes the flat horizontal version and makes it the point.
• Against dobos torte — the closest relative, and the decisive difference: that one also stacks many thin layers, but they are baked separately and glued with buttercream. Here there is nothing between the layers at all; the batter is continuous. Cut a dobos and you see bands of cream; cut this and you see bands of browning.
• Against sachertorte and pound cake: both bake as a single mass, so only the crust browns. That is why the same ingredients taste different here.
• The glaze need not be chocolate. A plain white sugar glaze — Zuckerglasur — is equally traditional and rather more common in Germany. The photograph is the chocolate version.
• A German cake that became more famous in Japan. It arrived with the German confectioner Karl Juchheim, who demonstrated it in Hiroshima in 1919, and it is now a standard Japanese wedding favour. That most Baumkuchen photographs on Wikimedia Commons come from Japanese patisseries is itself the evidence.
• Why the marzipan is there: the almond fat and moisture are what let the cake survive a dozen passes under direct heat. Ground almonds and sugar will stand in, but leave it out altogether and the result is noticeably drier. (Prinsesstårta uses marzipan too, to a completely different end.)

Tips

• Thin layers, three tablespoons. Spreading a layer too thick is the commonest way this goes wrong: direct heat scorches the surface while the inside stays raw, the layers merge, and no rings appear.
• The test is "browned", not "cooked". Pull each layer at pale gold and twelve of them still add up to an ordinary sponge. The flavour of this cake is the Maillard reaction repeated twelve times. It is the same thing that happens when you sear meat in a pan (browning and Maillard) — only once there and a dozen times here.
• Control it with distance, not temperature. The variable is the shelf, not a dial. Scorching in 40 seconds means drop a shelf; no colour after four minutes means raise one. Once it is right, leave it alone for the whole cake.
• Half the dry weight is starch for a reason. All flour and you build gluten, which toughens over a dozen bakes. Starch has no protein, so it cannot (choosing flour).
• Fold the whites, do not stir them. With no baking powder that foam is the only leavening; stir it in and the air goes with it.
• The tin is hot every time it comes out. Keep a cloth beside you, and two spatulas keeps the rhythm going.
• Cool it completely before glazing — an hour at least. Over a warm cake the chocolate never sets and runs off the layered sides, which are the sides worth showing.
• Cut it thin, 5-8mm. Thick slices hide the layers, which defeats the object.
• It keeps. High in butter and sugar and low in water, wrapped well it holds two or three weeks — which is how it became a German Christmas gift — and it is honestly better on day two (what sugar does).