Let us recall the most popular positions in the assortment of Soviet cafeterias and pastry shops. And there is something to remember.

At all times, the cake was considered a special dessert and, as a rule, decorated the festive table. But where did his story begin when the first cakes appeared? There is no exact answer to this question. Some historians believe that the cake is about two thousand years old and its roots can be found in Italy. According to linguists, "cake" is translated from Italian as something florid and intricate.

However, there are other versions. For example, they say that the cake is an exclusively Greek creation, because once in Greece they found uncomplicated cakes made from crumpled grains. There are also those who believe that the homeland of cakes can be the East, famous for its sweets. Supporters of the latest version found out that oriental culinary specialists prepared desserts that resembled the cakes we are used to today.

But whoever was the "parent" of this amazing dessert, France dictated and dictates fashion in the "cake" world. The serving and decoration of this sweet masterpiece is the merit of French confectioners. It was they who had a hand in the emergence of the components of modern cakes - meringues, cream, caramel, jelly, biscuit.

However, regardless of history, each country has its own secrets and recipes for baking cakes. So, the French adore fruit cakes, in Switzerland the main decoration of the festive table is carrot and cherry cakes, Sweden is famous for apple cakes, in Spain you can try a cake based on acorns, and in Italy a nut biscuit filled with crushed beans is popular. There are many options, and the imagination of the pastry chefs is not limited.

The wedding cake

There are many interesting facts connected with wedding cakes. Different countries and peoples had their own traditions of wedding baking. Some of them somehow survived to our times.

In Russia, cakes as such did not exist for a long time. But then there were wedding loaves, also called "bride's pies." A round cake decorated with intricate patterns held a special place in the wedding ceremony. At the same time, the loaf was baked in compliance with certain rules. So, the dough was prepared only by a married woman, the baked goods were trusted exclusively by the man, the child cut the bread, and the matchmaker handed out to the guests. At the wedding, the young people were always the first to touch bread.

In ancient Rome, wedding bread was baked from barley or wheat flour. During the ceremony, the groom would break the bread over the bride's head, and give the pieces to the guests, as if sharing his happiness with them.

In England, the wedding cake was collected from small sweet buns, symbolizing the happy and large life of young people. Only later did the mountain of shapeless buns turn into a beautiful cake - croquembush. The pyramid of cream balls was decorated with flowers and nuts.

It was in England that the first multi-tiered cakes appeared. It was in the 17th century, but only aristocrats could afford such a luxury. The author of this sweet invention is considered to be a London grocer who strove to come up with something special. Such a special idea was born after his eyes fell on the dome of the local church.

In the 17th century, Europeans were already baking two wedding cakes: one for the groom and the other for the bride. A ring was baked into the "bride's" cake. It was believed that the one who got the piece with the ring would be the next to marry. The groom's cake, modest in decoration, was larger in size. It was cut into pieces in advance, put in boxes and left at the exit - the guests took them apart when they went home. Now the tradition of two cakes is very rare.

History of pastries

Sponge cakes, sand cakes, airy ... These cute mini cakes, who invented them? Unfortunately, the name of the first inventor of the pastry is unknown. However, in our usual version, the cake was first prepared by a certain Ernst-August Gardes, a chef in the town of Schwedt, who later began to “cook” at the court of Wilhelm Frederick II. Later Erns-August moved from Berlin to Salzwedel, where he headed one of the restaurants. Many years later, after accidentally finding his grandfathers' recipe for cakes, his granddaughter Louise Lenz began to bake them.

Wilhelm Friedrich IV tried the cakes she performed in 1841, tried it and fell in love. He brought mini-cakes with him to treat his spouse. As a result, this cake was awarded the title of "royal cake".

Answers culinary historian, writer Pavel Syutkin:

- Today on the Internet you can often find the so-called “Runeberg cake” along with the mention of the “Potato” recipe. At the same time, in all seriousness, it is argued that our dessert was first invented by him - the Finnish by the poet Johan Runeberg or his wife Fredrika.

However, the difference between these recipes is striking. The Soviet pastry "Potato" was not baked. And it was simply made from biscuit crumbs and scraps of cakes, which were mixed with creamy, sweet cream, as an option - with condensed milk. To the resulting mass, the confectioners added raisins, nuts - who in what way. In the Finnish recipe, on the contrary, we see baking, heat treatment of the product.

Something similar to a recipe familiar to us from childhood was encountered in Russia at the very beginning of the 20th century. Only then was this "Potato" a way to dispose of old pastries and biscuit cakes. In this regard, it could not be included in any culinary books of the 19th century by definition. She was not a cookery, but just such a kind of business decision to save expired products in the then "public catering" - taverns, teahouses.

And the dessert began to be called "Potato" for a simple reason. To mask the dissimilar contents, the cake was doused in cocoa powder. Which gave it the brown appearance of a potato tuber. The name of the one who could have come up with this cake, unfortunately, did not reach us.

Under the USSR, "Potato" from a "second-rate" dessert associated with the salvation of stale sweets, goes into the category of an independent and incredibly popular cake. Our famous confectioner Kengis writes that it is made "from scraps that are obtained in the process of work." Remember, every gram in the USSR was subject to accounting and control. So “Potato” is just a salvation for the cooks of all canteens and restaurants of the 1930s-80s.

But still, this dish is much wider than catering. It is an undoubted companion of Soviet culinary, which experienced an acute shortage of food. Memories wife of Boris Pasternak Zinaida Nikolaevna, relating to the autumn of 1941, very clearly emphasize this. For the holiday on November 7, she managed to ... bake cakes! “I only had rye flour in stock, and I did all sorts of samples with it all night. Finally, I overcooked it in a frying pan, pounded it, added eggs, honey and white wine, and the result was a delicious potato cake, - this is the description of this dessert left by Zinaida Nikolaevna.

Johan Ludwig Runeberg (1804-1807) is a Finnish poet of Swedish origin who wrote poetry of national romantic content in Swedish. He is best known for the cycle "Tales of Ensign Stol", one of the poems of this cycle - "Our Land" later became the anthem of Finland.

The history of this beloved delicacy is very curious and, like much in cooking, is connected with the manifestation of human wit in extreme conditions.

Johan Ludwig Runeberg (5.2.1804 - 6.5.1877), a famous Finnish poet, lived in Finland in the 19th century. In Finland, on his birthday, February 5, is celebrated as the national Runeberg Day.

This day became a holiday in the early 1900s. This is not a day off, but liputuspaiva, i.e. a solemn day on which national flags are flown. Moreover, they are hung out not only on administrative buildings, as we do in Russia. Every Finn can buy a Finnish flag, erect a pole in front of his house and raise the flag on liputuspaiva day at his own discretion: on Independence Day, Runeberg, Kalevala or Mother's Day. Or on your own birthday or wedding.

Once upon a time, very famous guests in the world unexpectedly came to the house of the then already famous poet Runeberg. However, there was nothing to treat the guests - in the house of the not too wealthy Runeberg family there were only old cookies and some booze. It should be noted here that in those days, cookies were bought not as now - in packs, but in kuli (bags), so that at the bottom of the kul there were a lot of broken cookies and crumbs. It was inconvenient for the hostess to serve this on the table to the eminent guests who accidentally entered. And here Mrs. Runeberg showed her culinary savvy.

While her husband entertained the guests with poetry, Mrs. Runeberg quickly ground the pieces of cookies in a mortar, added sour cream, jam, a little bit of liquor, and kneaded a plastic mass out of which she made the likeness of potatoes. Decorated the top with berries from jam. Then she beautifully laid out the result of her creativity on the only silver dish available in the house and presented the guests as a new cake, which turned out to be very tasty (this is how she got a version of the now well-known cake “Potato”). The guests vying with each other asked for a recipe for a new dessert. Over time, incl. and thanks to the fame of the poet Runeberg, the cake recipe spread throughout the country.

Then culinary experts around the world worked a lot to improve Mrs. Runeberg's recipe, whipped up from what she had at hand.

In the course of culinary experiments, it turned out that a heated biscuit aged 12-24 hours after baking is optimal as the base of this cake. Instead of the mixture of sour cream and jam with the addition of liqueur, hastily invented by Ms. Runeberg, they began to use various confectionery creams (including sour cream), always flavored with a small addition to the mixture of good cognac or rum.

So at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, the world famous and everyone's favorite cake "Potato"

It should be warned here that modern industrial biscuits, prepared with the use of low-edible surrogate fats and certainly stuffed with all kinds of chemical additives E, are highly undesirable for making the Potato cake.

But it is quite possible to grind fragments of cookies or gingerbread cookies or gingerbread made with your own hands for "Potato" with excellent success.

Amazing "Potato" cakes are made from the dried remains of good homemade gingerbread. (This does not apply to modern industrial gingerbread, which are also abundantly flavored with all sorts of low-edible additives.)

Professional chefs rarely use grinding of gingerbread products, because weeks or even months of exposure are required before grinding (depending on the composition of the gingerbread dough). It is one thing to keep a baked biscuit for 12 hours, another is to store specially made gingerbread products for 2-3 months, which is too expensive. After all, the industrial production of Kartoshka cakes does not work on the resulting marriage of other confectionery industries (as some believe), but on the full production cycle.

Heated dough biscuit

To prepare 400 g of biscuit you will need:
6 eggs
6 tbsp. tablespoons of sugar
4 tbsp. tablespoons of flour
1 tbsp. a spoonful of starch (potato, corn or rice)

PREPARATION

Start preheating the oven to 200-220 C even before beating the dough.

Prepare a water bath: pour 4-5 liters of water with a temperature of 70-80 C. into a basin or a large saucepan.

Pour the eggs into a saucepan for beating, add granulated sugar, put in a water bath for heating and beat continuously until the mass reaches 40-50 C, then remove from the water bath and, without stopping whipping, cool to 18-20 C. At the same time, the volume of the mass should increase 2.5-3 times. Then immediately pour the pre-measured flour into the whipped mass and gently (so as not to extinguish the foam) stir until a homogeneous dough is obtained and immediately pour it into a prepared round or square cake mold, greased with butter and lightly floured or neatly lined with oiled paper. Fill the mold with dough no more than 2/3 of the height, level the surface with a spoon or knife.

If you do not have a special cake mold, you can use a frying pan, saucepan, stewpan, or homemade paper mold glued from thick paper. A sponge cake for cutting into individual cakes is baked on a baking sheet with sides 2.5-4 cm high. You can also spread the dough with a thin layer (4-6 mm) on a circle or rectangle made of oiled paper, placed in a frying pan or on a baking sheet.

At a temperature of 200-220 C, a biscuit 25-40 mm thick is baked for 35-50 minutes, a biscuit thinner than 10 mm (in the form of a spread) - 10-20 minutes.

For the first 10-15 minutes of baking, the tins with dough should not be touched, shaken or rearranged from place to place. The readiness of a thin layer of a biscuit is determined by the color of the upper crust (it should be browned) and by elasticity - if a dimple remains on the biscuit after pressing with your finger, then it is not yet ready, if the dimple immediately disappears - the biscuit is baked. The readiness of a thick biscuit is determined by a wooden stick stuck into the biscuit and immediately removed - if the stick is dry, the biscuit is ready.

When baking in several tins, do not place them close to each other. If the top of the biscuit begins to burn (this may be at elevated temperatures), cover it with wetted water and folded paper in 2-4 layers.

The baked biscuit is cooled for at least 30 minutes, then carefully removed from the mold, for which it is drawn around the inner walls of the mold with a thin knife, and then the mold is turned over and slightly raised, and the biscuit comes out of the mold. Then the biscuit is cleaned of paper and burnt areas with a knife or grater. Then the biscuit is allowed to stand at room temperature for at least 4 hours, and if it is planned to wet it with flavored syrup, then at least 7 hours, otherwise it will fall apart during cutting.

Warm sponge cake with various additives

With nuts. At the end of whipping the sugar and egg mass, before adding flour, add 3 teaspoons of fried, finely chopped or minced nuts (walnuts, hazelnuts or pine nuts).

With cocoa. Add 2 teaspoons of sifted cocoa powder in the same way.

With lemon or orange. Grate 0.5 lemon or orange together with the zest and add to the sugar and egg mass as described above.

We can talk for a long time about what modern cakes are, but it is still not completely known who first proposed the recipe for these wonderful sweets. However, even in one of the most famous cookbooks, which belonged to Maria - Sophia Schellhammer, you can find several unique recipes for these sweet desserts at once. By the way, the book was published in the 17th century.

It should be noted that for the first time pastries gained immense popularity back in the 18th century. During his visit to the city of Kronsberg, Hans Otto was able to taste these sweets, which were kindly provided to him by Martha Pfal. The unforgettable taste of the dessert impressed the count so much that he gave the order to deliver cakes to his table several times a week.

Perhaps such cakes, which we all know, were first prepared by pastry chef August Gardes, who learned his culinary skills when he served in the town of Schwedt. After a while, the culinary specialist went on to rise, opened his own restaurant and delighted customers with delicious cakes every day. After the death of Augustus, his granddaughter accidentally found an old recipe in the records and one can only thank the gods for the fact that the young girl decided to continue her grandfather's work and took up it with great desire.

Any history is known to repeat itself. And so, in the middle of the 19th century, when Wilhelm Friedrich was presented with cakes, he was struck by their taste, like his ancestors. Of course, Louise Lenz was the author of the sweet masterpiece. By the way, the cakes turned out to be so delicious that the distinguished gentleman could not resist and took several pieces with him so that his wife could also enjoy this wonderful delicacy. As a result, the cakes were named "royal cake". By the way, for her wonderful cakes, Louise Lenz received a silver service from the king's wife, and after a few years, sweet delicacies began to be supplied to major European capitals.

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