Quarter Life Crisis

The world according to Sven-S. Porst

Träubletorte¶

554 words on Recipes

Hmmmm, last weekend I made my favourite cake, Träubletorte. My grandma used to make it and from some stage I always wanted it for my birthday, so my mum had to make it as well. Now I finally made it myself.

The cake has a thin shortcrust dough at the bottom and red currants in a kind of almond meringue on top. Its blend between sweet and sour is just perfect and I’m pretty sure I could eat it every day.

The big problem with the cake are its ingredients. Not only can red currants be quite pricey – more relevantly their season seems to be very short and easy to miss. Thus, on seeing them in the supermarket two weeks ago I immediately bought a pack… just to have my flatmates eat half of them before I could get hold of the recipe. Another week, another shopping spree and a quick digital photo sent from my mum’s cook book (digital cameras + e-mail seem to be the 21st century fax) and I was in business. So for my future memory and your enjoyment, here comes the recipe. You’ll need the following ingredients:

For the crust:

200g of flour
a tiny bit of baking powder
1 egg
50g of sugar
lemon zest
100g of soft butter or margarine

For the filling:

500g of red currants
5 egg whites
200g of sugar
100g of ground almonds (or more)

First prepare the crust: Mix the ingredients in the order given above, and knead a dough of them which shouldn’t be sticky but shouldn’t be crumbly either. I’d rather have the dough a bit on the greasy side to make sure it doesn’t stick to the pan. Roll out about half of the dough on the bottom of a well greased round (26cm diameter) baking tin [we typically use a Springform in Germany, a word and device which at least according to Google could be known in the rest of the world as well]. Then make a thinnish roll from the rest of the dough, place it along the edge of the tin and press the dough upwards, giving you a nice and thin outer crust for the cake.

Next for the filling: First you need to wash the red currants and remove the little wooden bits. That can take a moment, so it might be good to do it in advance. Next whip up the egg whites so they’re really firm and whip the sugar in as well, giving you a stiff-ish shiny mass. Then drag the almonds into the mass and split it in two. Put one half aside for a moment and carefully add the red currants to the mass. Then put that mixture onto the crust in the tin. Finally put the other half on top – which will give you a nice and slightly crisp-meringuey top.

Bake at about 180°C for 55 minutes.

In my opinion it’s best to let the cake cool off, then put it into the fridge and remove it about half an hour before eating, which will give you a lovely room-temperature crust but refreshingly cool berries. Having some whipped cream of top doesn’t hurt either…