Salzwedeler Baumkuchen

Appearance & taste

The whole Baumkuchen is 60 to 90 cm long and 12 to 40 cm in diameter on the outside and 4 to 20 cm on the inside, because it is hollow along its long axis. It weighs 2 to 5 kg. The layers are irregular, and the outside is slightly jagged. When cut, it shows golden-brown layers of even thickness like tree rings; the crumb is evenly light and slightly moist. The coating of sugar glaze or chocolate is even, covers well and is glossy and smooth, white to creamy, light or dark brown depending on the kind.

The cake is usually not served at full size but in rings 5 to 50 cm high and weighing 50 g to 4 kg, most often 300 to 500 g. There are also Baumkuchenspitzen, small trapezoidal or irregular pieces, and Baumkuchen bars 8 to 10 cm long, both fully coated with chocolate, the bars also with fondant. The varieties differ in their coating: fondant, dark, milk or white chocolate, several of these combined, or no coating.

Production

For 1 kg of butter or butterfat there is 1 kg of flour, fine wheat flour, wheat or maize starch in the composition used by each business, and 0.8 to 1 kg each of egg yolk, egg white and sugar. Natural flavourings are added, optionally apricot jam, and the coating of fondant or chocolate. Preservatives, baking powder and other raising agents are not used. These quantities make a cake of about 3.5 to 4 kg.

The batter is applied layer by layer with a ladle to a rotating spit and baked over an open fire. According to the specification, the recipe and method have not changed for around 150 years. The Baumkuchen is neither pasteurised nor frozen and is a freshly baked product. The entire production takes place in Salzwedel.

Origin & history

In 1807 the journeyman confectioner Johann Andreas Schernikow wrote down a Baumkuchen recipe on which, according to the specification, production at the 1. Salzwedeler Baumkuchenfabrik is still based today; around 1812 he was granted citizenship of Salzwedel. “Salzwedeler Baumkuchen” is first mentioned in a document in 1843. In the second half of the 19th century, the town’s bakers and confectioners began baking Baumkuchen for dispatch, to Berlin, Hanover, central Germany and abroad as far as Vienna and St Petersburg; 80 to 90 % of production went elsewhere. In 1883 Dietrichs and Parisius wrote in “Bilder aus der Altmark” that thousands of crates went from Salzwedel to all of Germany, often also to Russia and America.

In times of hardship such as 1914 to 1918 and 1939 to 1948, production regularly came to a standstill because of the high-quality raw materials. After the Second World War it slowly revived, despite the expropriation of the largest producer in 1958; because of shortages of raw materials, butter was at times partly replaced by margarine, and once again much was exported, above all to Western countries. Baumkuchen is eaten above all at Christmas, Easter and on birthdays. The town is also called the “Baumkuchenstadt” (Baumkuchen town); since 2004 there has been a Baumkuchen queen and an annual Baumkuchen festival, and production can be watched in some show bakeries.