The Black Forest Cake
Desserts made with cherries and cream are a long-standing gourmet tradition in the Black Forest region of Germany (Baden-Württemberg). Some claim that a similar cake appeared in this region as early as the late 16th century, inspired by the colors – black, red, and white – of the traditional costume of its inhabitants. Others specify that it is the dark chocolate shavings decorating the cake that inspired its name, as they resemble the dark hues of the Black Forest trees. Others still believe that the cake's name could come from the kirsch used in its composition, which is mainly produced in this region.
In any case, it was Josef Keller (1887 – 1981), a pastry chef at the spa town of Bad Godesberg, now part of the city of Bonn (North Rhine-Westphalia), who first claimed the authorship of the Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte, which he allegedly created in 1915 at Café Ahrend where he worked at the time. According to a recipe written by Keller in 1927, the cake was made from shortcrust pastry and had only one layer. However, the cherry-whipped cream mixture and the kirsch flavoring were already present. It was only later that Keller replaced the shortcrust pastry with a sponge cake to make the cake more transportable.
However, according to research by Udo Rauch, municipal archivist of the city of Tübingen (Baden-Württemberg), it was rather a certain Erwin Hildenbrand, a pastry chef at Café Walz in this city, who "invented" the cake in the spring of 1930. In any case, the first written mention of a Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte is found in the classic work by Johannes Martin Erich Weber, "250 Konditorei-Spezialitäten und wie sie entstehen" [250 Pastry Specialties and How They Are Created], published in Dresden in 1934. However, in the recipe given in the book, the cocoa sponge cake is replaced by a hazelnut shortcrust pastry, first covered with cherry jam, then a layer of kirsch and sugar-flavored nuts, then two layers of buttercream, and a combination of whipped cream and cherries, with the final layer again consisting of nuts. The surface was indeed made of whipped cream and chocolate shavings. Despite this initial notoriety, the cake was mainly known in Berlin and in the pastry shops of major German, Austrian, or Swiss cities. At the time, the limited number of refrigerators hardly allowed for good preservation.
It was truly from the 1950s onwards that the Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte experienced the meteoric rise that made it the favorite cake of Germans and an emblem of German pastry worldwide. Since 2006, a "Black Forest Cake Festival" has been held every two years in a district of the small town of Todtnau (near Freiburg im Breisgau in Baden-Württemberg), where both amateur and professional pastry chefs compete with their creations. Finally, it should be noted that in Germany, Black Forest cake is never eaten as a dessert, but at coffee or tea time.
