Selected Recipes from "Kafka's Cookbook"

 Hello Bakers:

The following recipes are relatively easy to make. I have converted the original German measurements from Gramm to ounces, as best as possible.

The instructions on how to prepare the dough, and how to bake it, are often very vague, and one must use ones best judgment and experience. Considering the fact that “in the old days” the mixing was done by hand, and the baking was done in wood or coal fired ovens, temperatures varied and related to different baking times.

Nowadays, we have a much better way of adjusting the heat, and most often also have an oven with a window to see what’s going on, and we can follow the baking process so much easier.

When the recipes were written the use of baking powder was not quite common. You will find that many cake recipes use stiffly beaten egg whites (snow) as a leavening agent. I noticed that there was no mention of salt, but lots of butter. So I wonder, if the butter was salted for better preservation, because refrigeration, as we know it today, did not exist. There were ice cellars underground, where large blocks of ice were kept, and sometimes a special treat like home made ice cream could be prepared.

They did have vanilla beans, and oranges and lemons. They even used a glass of Madeira (wine) in one of the following recipes, which I have tried, and they resulted in delicious cakes. However, considering todays concerns about sugar, I would use a bit less.  

Since some of us follow a gluten free diet, I have included 2 GF recipes.

Recipe # 507 GEFUELLTE BISKUITROLLE  “sponge cake/jelly roll”

Ingredients

4 eggs

2.1 oz sugar 

2.1 oz flour 

raspberry- or strawberry marmalade

Preparation

Separate egg whites and yolks. Beat the whites to snow and carefully integrate the yolks, sugar and flour.

Bake the dough on a flat sheet that had been prepared with butter and lightly dusted with flour to avoid sticking. Bake until dough is light yellow and still soft, otherwise it will crumble during rolling.

When ready, cover the dough with a thin layer of marmalade and roll up while still hot. 

After the roll has cooled, cut into slices and serve with fruit juice.

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Recipe # 510  DATTELTORTE  (torte/cake with dates)

Ingredients

For the dough:  3.5 oz sugar

                          3.5 oz butter

                          6.4 oz flour

                          3 eggs

For the filling:   8 egg whites

                        10.5 oz almonds

                        10.5 oz dates

                         1 Glas Madeira

Preparation

Beat the butter to a foam, add alternatively 3 egg yolks and flour, and lastly the snow of the 3 eggs. Then one rolls the dough flat and fills the bottom of a baking form with it and bakes it only half ready.

Now one beats 8 eggs whites to a snow and adds the sugar, the ground almonds and the dates which have been cut into thin strips. Then one fills the mix onto the half baked dough. The torte is being returned to the oven where it will be baked until ready. It can be decorated with dates.

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Recipe  # 516  SANDTORTE  (“sand torte/cake)

Ingredients

8.8 oz sugar

8.8 oz butter

8.8 oz oat flour

3 eggs

peel of one lemon

vanilla extract

Preparation

One beats/mixes the butter with the sugar for 1 hour (in the old days without a mixer) and adds, one by one, the whole eggs, lemon peel and vanilla, and at last the oat flour, after which the dough may not be mixed any more.

One then fills the dough into a cake form which has been buttered and dusted with flour, and bakes the cake slowly at mid-heat. 

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Recipe # 524  APFELKUCHEN  (apple cake) with # 516  SUESSER TEIG MIT BUTTER (sweet dough with butter)

Ingredients 

For the dough: 6 oz flour,

                        3 oz butter

                        3 oz sugar

                        2 egg yolks

For the topping: 12 apples, sugar, raisins

Preparation of the cake

The evening before one peels the apples, cuts them in 4-6 pieces and adds sugar. 

The next morning one covers the bottom of a baking form with the dough, adds the apples in a circle, distributes a bit more sugar and the raisins and bakes the cake slowly.

Preparation of the dough

For the dough one sifts sugar and flour on a flat surface to make a mold with a little hole in the middle for mixing the yolks with the flour/sugar. Then one cuts the butter into pieces and mixes everything by hand making first little crumbs and then a smoothie ball of dough and lets it rest for an hour before using it again.

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Anna Pouzarova’s special GUGELHUPF  (explained in the KOCHBUCH on page 78)

Ingredients 

8.8 oz powdered sugar

5.5 to 6 oz potato or corn starch

6 eggs , separated into yolks and whites

orange and lemon peel, lemon juice

Preparation in Anna’s voice

The sugar was rubbed on the peel of an orange and a lemon (it must have come in a block in the those days…)

and passed through a sieve in order to avoid clumping.

Then one added 6 egg yolks and everything was mixed for half an hour (much faster now with a mixer)

Thereafter a bit of lemon juice was added and starch powder (either corn starch or potato starch) in the weight of 2 raw eggs.

Finally the thick snow of 6 egg whites was incorporated,

and everything was then carefully filled into a baking form which had been prepared with butter and thinly coated with flour and then bake in the oven.

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Enjoy!