Liberal Arts Blog — Best Chocolate Cake Ever? Buche de Noel? Sachertorte?
Liberal Arts Blog — Sunday is the Joy of Humor, Food, Travel, Practical Life Tips, and Miscellaneous Day
Today’s Topic: Best Chocolate Cake Ever? Buche de Noel? Sachertorte?
So what is the best chocolate cake you ever had? Do you still dream about it? Where was it? Who baked it? Do you have a recipe? I once baked a chocolate cake. It was about fifty years ago. It was so much work, I never even tried to do it again. It had many, many layers, walnuts and mocha. It was my Romanian grandmother’s recipe. She loved to bake and into her nineties had arms stronger than those of most of my classmates in high school. Anyway, this post was inspired by a photograph from an article in the New York Times by five-time James Beard Award winning food writer Dorie Greenspan on her version of the traditional French pastry called the “financier.” Experts — please chime in. Correct, elaborate, elucidate.
THE TRADITIONAL FINANCIER LOOKS NOTHING LIKE GREENSPAN’S CAKE
1. “Financiers are the plain Janes of the pastry world. Usually, they’re unglazed, unfrosted, undecorated in any way. And that’s what they’re meant to be — simplicity is built into their DNA. The story goes that the pastry chef Lasne, who had a shop near the Paris stock exchange in the last 1800s, created these little cakes for his stockbroker clients as a treat that wouldn’t muss their hands.”
2. “The version I heard was a little fuller. Someone once told me that the brokers, also known as financiers, would come into the shop for a break in the afternoon and that they were always in a hurry — they didn’t have time for the pastries that required a knife and fork and a moment to savor them — and that they tried anything that left crumbs. I always imagined them racing back to the exchange trying to brush itsy bits of pastry off their ties, mufflers, and beards.”
3. “The miniature cake that Lasne created could be eaten out of hand. It was made with ground nuts — usually almonds — and mixed with egg whites, so its texture had a subtle chewiness. And it it had butter, a lot of butter adding roundness to the flavor, and, I thought, making the cake as rich as the people it was named for. In order to make it even more appealing for his clients — or because he had a sly sense of humor — Lasne baked the cakes in rectangular tins, so that they mimicked gold ingots.”
NB: “The cakes live up to their legend. They’re quietly delicious — butter, nuts, and sugar have discreet charms. They’re satisfying — a small portion delivers outsize pleasure — and they’re an inspiration to bakers — the recipe invites variation.”
THE “TIGRE” (WITH AN ACUTE ACCENT OVER THE E) VERSION OF THE FINANCIER HAS CHUNKS OF CHOCOLATE - TIGRE (WITH THE ACCENT) MEANS “STRIPED” NOT TIGER
1. “Financier can be made with other kinds of nuts; they’re often made with hazelnuts and are particularly nice with pistachios.”
2. ‘The melted butter can be browned, which adds a deeper flabor and more color to the cake. Spices can bemixed into the batter. A berry of a thin slice of fruit can be added to the top of the cakes before baking.”
3. “I think I’ve riffed on the financier at least a dozen ways, but the play on the recipe that I always come back to is run through with chopped chocolate and known in French pastry shops as tigre, which means striped.”
A SHORT HISTORY OF CHOCOLATE CAKE TECHNOLOGY — from the Americas to the Netherlands to Switzerland to the US
1. “The history of chocolate cake goes back to the 17th century, when cocoa powder from the Americas were added to traditional cake recipes. In 1828, Coenrad van Houten of the Netherlands developed a mechanical extraction method for extracting the fat from cacao liquor resulting in cacao butter and the partly defatted cacao, a compacted mass of solids that could be sold as it was “rock cacao” or ground into powder.”
2. “The processes transformed chocolate from an exclusive luxury to an inexpensive daily snack. A process for making silkier and smoother chocolate called conching was developed in 1879 by Rudolph Lindt and made it easier to bake with chocolate, as it amalgamates smoothly and completely with cake batters.”
3. “Until 1890 to 1900, chocolate recipes were mostly for chocolate drinks, and its presence in cakes was only in filings and glazes. In 1886, American cooks began adding chocolate to the cake batter, to make the first chocolate cakes in the US.”
NB: The sachertorte (above) was allegedly invented in Vienna in 1832 for Prince Metternich. “It consists of a dense chocolate cake with a thin layer of apricot jam in between two halves, coated in dark chocolate icing on the top and sides. It is traditionally served with unsweetened whipped cream.”
A Brand-New Cake From a Pastry Paradise
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