James Starmer - Food » cake http://jamesstarmer.com/food Fri, 24 Dec 2010 02:26:33 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.3 Mini Baum Kuchen http://jamesstarmer.com/food/mini-baum-kuchen/ http://jamesstarmer.com/food/mini-baum-kuchen/#comments Mon, 06 Oct 2008 02:37:38 +0000 James http://jamesstarmer.com/food/?p=172 baum kuchen

I have fond memories of baum kuchen from a trip to Germany my family took when I was a kid. It translates to “tree cake” in english. It’s cooked in a special machine with a spit where layer upon layer of batter is cooked into a cake with concentric circles like a tree. It’s covered in a hard chocolate shell. It’s the best cake I’ve ever had.

My sister Anika has tried to replicate baum kuchen with her baum kuchen spitzen. Honestly she has had much better results than I have, I should have asked her for her recipe before setting out on my own. But I did get a layered effect and I think my mini cakes look pretty cool, even if they don’t really taste like true baum kuchen. But honestly I don’t think you are going to get true baum kuchen at home unless you can get that crazy spit cooker thing. Here is the base recipe that I used.

Mini Baum Kuchen

Ingredients

1 c. butter
1 c. sugar
2 eggs
2 tbsp dark rum
2 egg whites whipped to soft peaks
1 c. cake flour
3 tbsp baking powder

Cup cake tins
Foil cupcake wrappers

Preparation

Preheat the broiler to 425
Cream together the butter and the sugar
Mix in the whole eggs
Mix in the rum
Sift together flour and baking powder
Slowly mix the flour into the sugar, butter, egg mix
Gently fold in the egg whites

Add just enough batter to just cover the bottom of each cup cake wrapper
Put into the oven for a few minutes, just until the cake started to get dark brown
Add another layer of batter just covering the previously baked layer
Put into the oven again until brown
Continue this process until you reach the top of the cup cake
Let cool for about an hour
Flip the cakes upside down
Cover in chocolate icing or melted chocolate

This is the icing that I used but I don’t think I’d use it again, it was just too rich and it didn’t set as hard as I would have liked but I’ll post it for reference.

Chocolate Butter Icing

Ingredients

1/2 cup milk chocolate chips
4 tbsp butter

Preparation

In a double boiler melt the chocolate and butter together
Mix continuously until blended
Let cool to desired thickness before applying to cake

baum kuchen

baum kuchen

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