Seven-Layer Cake

[abooja]

I'm wondering if someone can help me. I'm looking to recreate a seven-layer cake that my mother used to purchase from Stern's, a now-defunct (German) kosher bakery in Brooklyn. It’s been many years since I’ve enjoyed this cake, so my memory is a bit fuzzy as to the details. The next best thing I’ve had in recent years was the seven-layer cake from Leon’s Pastry Shop on Knapp Street, which itself closed not too long ago. That cake, while quite tasty, did not have the hard shell on the top and sides, but what I believed to be chocolate ganache. I recently tried the seven-layer cake at Weiss Bakery in Philadelphia, which was actually delivered that morning from one of its sister bakeries in Brooklyn, of all places, but it was inferior to both these cakes. The layers were too dense, the top too chewy/fudgy, and it tasted of mocha. The cake I remember did not taste of mocha, and was light and airy throughout. This, I remember distinctly, as I would have detested that flavor as a little girl.

For my next attempt, I am going to use the dobos torte cake recipe from the eG thread of the same name and a whipped chocolate ganache, but can't decide on a recipe for the chocolate coating. As I recall, it was a hard shell of dark chocolate, but it could easily be cut through with a fork. Which recipe do you think is most like this description -- the Michael Laiskonis glaçage, the "Glaze of all Glazes" from aguynamedrobert, the glaze that shaloop came up with (both from the Pastry Ganache - Fillings and Glazes thread), or something entirely different?

This will be my third shot at recreating this cake, and I don't want to fail as miserably as I did the first two times. I'm inclined to not even go the usual dobos torte route by baking a light, white cake and cutting it into seven layers, rather than several egg-intensive thin layers (they always come out too eggy-chewy for me, almost like a moist fortune cookie), but was sold by the positive reviews of oli's recipe, and the fact that, with the addition of cream, it was different enough from the recipes I used for my past attempts. Unless someone suggests otherwise, I'm also using a light whipped ganache, made with Scharffen Berger semisweet, for the filling (Rose Levy Beranbaum's recipe from The Cake Bible), as I disliked the choice of Italian meringue buttercream that I made last time. The whole thing was chewy and overly sweet. I believe I may have also topped it with my attempt at the aforementioned “glaze of all glazes”, but don’t remember how well that worked out as I hated the rest of the cake so much.

If all goes well, baking will commence tomorrow. I got sick and couldn’t go to Los Angeles with my husband a couple of days ago, so this is my consolation prize. And his. He would forever worship me if I could manage to finally pull this off.

Thanks for any help you can provide.

[sugarseattle]

if you can describe what the cake texture was like, we can point you in the direction of the type of cake you should make (sponge, butter, genoise, chiffon, etc.) also, if you could describe the filling and frosting better, that would help.

it's much easier to recreate the cake by knowing all the parts, rather than having you work through an entire recipe of cake/filling/frosting...

[abooja]

if you can describe what the cake texture was like, we can point you in the direction of the type of cake you should make (sponge, butter, genoise, chiffon, etc.) also, if you could describe the filling and frosting better, that would help.

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Thanks for replying, Stephanie.

A seven-layer cake is basically an adaptation of a dobos torte, without the caramel topping, that was/is very popular in kosher bakeries in the New York area for many years. The problem with describing it properly is that I guess I'm not quite sure what its texture should really be like, only what I prefer. The bad seven-layers I've had were made with a dense, eggy cake that it was difficult to run a fork through without tearing the thing apart. The cake I preferred was a light, white cake, likely made with more egg whites than yolks. The cream in between the layers was a pale, mildly chocolate cream, but I'm not at all sure whether it was buttercream or whipped ganache. It was a German bakery, if that means anything. The chocolate coating was as I described above.

That help at all?

[kitwilliams]

Might the filling have been a chocolate pastry cream? -- was it more pudding-like, do you recall? If the cake were refrigerated and the filling had been buttercream or ganache, they would have become quite hard.

[abooja]

Might the filling have been a chocolate pastry cream?  -- was it more pudding-like, do you recall?  If the cake were refrigerated and the filling had been buttercream or ganache, they would have become quite hard.

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Again, I can't be certain, but I don't believe it was a pastry cream. It was definitely not pudding-like. If memory serves me right, these cakes were sold unrefrigerated, in a display case at the counter, as was the cake I bought the other day in Philly. My mother would typically refrigerate it, however, and serve it at room temperature. She remembers buying it refrigerated, but I recall seeing the cakes at eye level as a child, in a display case, along with the Charlotte Russe, a round, thin slice of white cake topped with a huge pile of whipped cream and chocolate shavings in a paper cup. Then again, something like that should have been refrigerated. I suppose this might have been a refrigerated display case and that I just ate it once it was brought to room temperature. The filling was definitely not hard, just the chocolate coating.

Sorry to be so confusing, but it's been more than 25 years since I visited this bakery.

[Nyleve Baar]

I know the cake. My Hungarian mother bought a hunk of it probably every week of my young life until I moved away from home. The one I loved was probably the eggier version you don't want, because my favourite way of eating it was to peel it off one layer at a time. The filling was a chocolate buttercream - but not overly sweet. And since it was a kosher bakery, it probably wasn't butter either.

I would recommend a classic dobos torte with a smooth semi-sweet chocolate buttercream, made with butter. The cake, well, I wouldn't cut a cake into the seven layers. I'd be more inclined to make a single thin sheet cake and cut it into rectangleular pieces to layer - the cake was always an oblong anyway. And it seemed to me that each layer had some of the "skin" on it.

Good luck.

[pastrymama]

For a glaze that fits your description, I melt 1 pound of semisweet or bittersweet chocolate with about 7 ounces of butter, you could substitute a kosher margarine if you want it kosher, stir it well and spread over your cake while it is warm. It will set up quite firm in the refrigerator, but is easy to cut with a warm knife, and is easily eaten with a fork. I hope this may help.

[abooja]

Thanks to you both!

Nyleve, I read your bio and immediately felt a kinship with you, except for the part about having kids, moving to Canada, and being employed as a food writer.

I'm thrilled that a NYC native has shown up to shed some more light on this subject. I'm sure you're right about the layers I previously baked being in the right ballpark, but I would still like to lighten them up somehow. The recipe I plan on using calls for 10 separated eggs. Perhaps I can change that to something like, 7 egg yolks and 11 egg whites? I can always use the extra yolks for ice cream.

Also, given that both Stern's and Leon's were kosher bakeries, I suppose they didn't use butter in their buttercream, as you suggest. How might one go about making a buttercream without butter and not have it taste like Wilton buttercream? I mean, I like that stuff on a butter cake, but the texture was nothing like what I remember. Do kosher bakeries use shortening or, somehow, oil in their buttercreams? We asked the lady behind the counter at Weiss' kosher bakery in Philadelphia to ask the bakers in Brooklyn, and they said they baked with vegetable oil. I have no idea if they meant in the cake or the cream or both. Sheesh.

Pastrymama, that sounds about right. I've made a version of that in the past, but coupled with a crap cake, it was unmemorable. I also found a recipe for hard chocolate glaze on bakingcircle.com that involved boiling cocoa, water, salt and granulated sugar, mixing in vanilla extract, then pouring it while warm onto your cake.

Of course, that won't work with a cake coated with buttercream, but it sounded intriguing. The author, who filched it from an old King Arthur Flour recipe, said it produced a stiff, crackly type glaze.

Edited July 30, 2008 by abooja (log)

[cakewalk]

Also, given that both Stern's and Leon's were kosher bakeries, I suppose they didn't use butter in their buttercream, as you suggest.  How might one go about making a buttercream without butter and not have it taste like Wilton buttercream?  I mean, I like that stuff on a butter cake, but the texture was nothing like what I remember.  Do kosher bakeries use shortening or, somehow, oil in their buttercreams?  We asked the lady behind the counter at Weiss' kosher bakery in Philadelphia to ask the bakers in Brooklyn, and they said they baked with vegetable oil.  I have no idea if they meant in the cake or the cream or both.  Sheesh.

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The kosher bakery we shopped at when I was growing up (granted, it was in the Bronx, not Brooklyn, but still) used butter in some items. It doesn't make the item not kosher, it just makes it dairy instead of pareve. The "bakery lady" would always tell us when an item was dairy rather than pareve. So maybe the buttercream was actually made with butter.

Maida Heatter has a recipe for dobos torte which is high up on my list of things I must try to make. [but the weather in NY has not been conducive to baking (or moving, for that matter.)] It might fit the bill for you. I love her recipes and her instructions, she is so thorough yet unintimidating.

[John DePaula]

I think this is a cake whose origin was Austria. It migrated across Europe and may have come to the U.S. via France. In New Orleans, we called it a 'Dobash' cake and it was made locally famous by Gambino's Bakery. Lemon Doberge and Chocolate Doberge were were popular.

Try some alternate spellings to search for recipes: Doberge, Dobash, Dobos, Dobosch.

[abooja]

The kosher bakery we shopped at when I was growing up (granted, it was in the Bronx, not Brooklyn, but still) used butter in some items. It doesn't make the item not kosher, it just makes it dairy instead of pareve. The "bakery lady" would always tell us when an item was dairy rather than pareve. So maybe the buttercream was actually made with butter.

Maida Heatter has a recipe for dobos torte which is high up on my list of things I must try to make. [but the weather in NY has not been conducive to baking (or moving, for that matter.)] It might fit the bill for you. I love her recipes and her instructions, she is so thorough yet unintimidating.

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Thanks for the tip. I'll have to try to dig up that recipe.

I've been doing a lot of research on kosher baking. In fact, I just finished reading Pam R's epic Pesach thread from '05. I think I have finally figured out the whole pareve vs dairy thing. I assume the cakes I enjoyed as a child were kosher, just not pareve, and certainly not KFP. (They were always closed for the holidays.) Hmmm...In this instance, I'd certainly prefer a buttercream made with real butter. I've been toying with the idea of using Cook's Illustrated recipe from their Old-Fashioned Chocolate Layer Cake. It contains a pound of semisweet chocolate, half a pound of butter, and a good amount of heavy cream, among other things, so it's almost like a buttercream-ganache, if such a thing exists. It whips up to a pale brown shade, just like I remember, but definitely gets stiff once refrigerated. Someone also commented that it gets a bit grainy when cold. I don't suppose that's typical for a buttercream.

[abooja]

Maida Heatter has a recipe for dobos torte which is high up on my list of things I must try to make.

It turns out, I did run across that recipe while researching this cake. Since it contains more eggs yolks than whites, I'm concerned that it will be even chewier than the versions I eschew (har har). I am, however, intrigued by her use of lemon juice in the batter. I recall many of the white cakes at Stern's having a very faint lemon taste to them. That element, plus the lightness of their cakes, is partly what endeared them to me.

John, I checked out the famous Gambino's doberge cake and, while it looks delicious, I can tell it's not the same texture as the seven-layer cakes of my childhood. They look more like the best kind of gooey, fudgy yellow cake. It's so cool how they offer 50/50 cakes of both chocolate and lemon. I found a bunch of people online who seem to plotz over them.

[abooja]

The more research I do, the less decisive I become.

I ran across a dobos torte recipe from the California School of Culinary Arts – Le Cordon Bleu Program that suggests it is the original by Joszef Dobos, the creator of the dobos torte. It's similar to oli's recipe from the aforementioned thread, but includes lemon zest and omits the cream. The proportion of egg yolks to egg whites is 1:1. I think I might go this route.

However, I don't think I'll use their French buttercream recipe. Perhaps this is original, but it seems that an egg yolk-based buttercream would be way too rich for this cake. Again, I am stumped, because one would think a meringue buttercream would be called for instead, but am gunshy to go that route again, despising my last attempt. I believe I made it correctly, as it certainly looked good and had the right consistency but, once again, it wasn't what I remembered in this cake.

Hell, it might just be easier to buy a Ouija board and drum up the spirits of some old Stern's bakers than go through all this. My mother claims she was friendly with one of the bakers for a short while (not friendly enough, apparently ), but has no idea how to get in touch with him now.

Edited July 30, 2008 by abooja (log)

[Nyleve Baar]

I am going to divulge my mother's buttercream recipe - nothing on earth could possibly be easier. And I believe this might just give you the frosting you're looking for. Warning: it contains raw egg. But it's smooth and creamy and although my mother usually made it with non-dairy margarine (so that the cake could be served as a dessert after a meat meal) I always make it with butter.

As for the layers, I don't think I can help. I personally liked that sort of rubbery, pancakey type of cake layer so I wouldn't want to lighten them up at all. I suspect that you will find that a lighter cake layer will not give you the cake you remember at all. But I'd be really interested to hear how you make out.

Yeah - Canada. It just happened. And I love it. Get to NY once or twice a year, which is enough to fix me up.

My Mother's Chocolate Frosting Recipe

1/2 lb. unsalted butter

3 egg yolks

1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder

1 cup icing (confectioners) sugar

Beat well, until completely creamy. You can increase or decrease the amount of cocoa, depending on how deep a chocolate flavour you want. I think my mother used less cocoa, but I like it a little darker.

Makes enough to fill and frost a 9-inch round cake, so maybe you'll want to double the recipe for your 7 layer experiment.

Edited July 31, 2008 by Nyleve Baar (log)

[momshobby]

Is there never any kosher butter? I didn't realize that butter couldn't be kosher, as may cookie recipes such as jewish shortbread do have butter in them.

[abooja]

I am going to divulge my mother's buttercream recipe - nothing on earth could possibly be easier. And I believe this might just give you the frosting you're looking for. Warning: it contains raw egg. But it's smooth and creamy and although my mother usually made it with non-dairy margarine (so that the cake could be served as a dessert after a meat meal) I always make it with butter.

As for the layers, I don't think I can help. I personally liked that sort of rubbery, pancakey type of cake layer so I wouldn't want to lighten them up at all. I suspect that you will find that a lighter cake layer will not give you the cake you remember at all. But I'd be really interested to hear how you make out.

Yeah - Canada. It just happened. And I love it. Get to NY once or twice a year, which is enough to fix me up.

My Mother's Chocolate Frosting Recipe

1/2 lb. unsalted butter

3 egg yolks

1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder

1 cup icing (confectioners) sugar

Beat well, until completely creamy. You can increase or decrease the amount of cocoa, depending on how deep a chocolate flavour you want. I think my mother used less cocoa, but I like it a little darker.

Makes enough to fill and frost a 9-inch round cake, so maybe you'll want to double the recipe for your 7 layer experiment.

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Wow, thanks!! That is really very sweet of you (pun intended). I will have to try that next time as I went ahead and already made the cake.

I definitely should have waited. Although it photographs fairly well, it doesn't taste as it should and is not something I look forward to eating again.

The cake itself was the one successful element. I went with the dobos torte sponge cake recipe from the California Le Cordon Bleu. It was light and spongy, not chewy at all. It also contained some lemon zest, which I loved. And powdered sugar, which I believe accounts for the lighter texture. My only misstep here -- and this was a biggie -- was to schmear the batter on the bottoms of two half sheet baking pans, despite the recipe itself not specifying that. This tip, which I read in several dobos torte recipes, is supposed to help even out the schmear, and this did, in fact, work. It also dripped down and off all four sides of the pan, creating burnt blotches of elliptical pancake at the bottom of my oven, and a cake no thicker than a fortune cookie. I toyed with the idea of creating little Yodels with this cake, going so far as to cut out the little rectangles, but wound up not making enough filling for this project.

Fortunately, after a brief freeze, I was able to pry the second half of the batter off the back of its pan, clean off the shortening, and reapply it inside the pan. This technique, brilliant in its simplicity, worked perfectly well. A few toothpick pricks took care of any developing bubbles in the oven. I was quite pleased.

Onto the cream filling. After much hemming and hawing, I went with my fallback plan and made a light whipped ganache. Everything was going along swimmingly, until I overwhipped it. I've only whipped this stuff a couple of times prior, years ago, and forgot how quickly it sets up. I stopped just shy of it breaking, but it turned out somewhat grainy. It applied easily enough, however, so I forged ahead.

For the glaze, I used pastrymama's kindly donated ratio of one pound of chocolate to seven ounces of butter. Unfortunately, I used the same Scharffen Berger semisweet that I used in the ganache, and it wasn't quite right. I also applied too thick a coat. I stupidly thought a bitterweet chocolate would have been wrong as I've been using it a lot lately and figured, somehow, I wouldn't have appreciated that flavor as a child, and it wound up being too mild. It's just not the right chocolate. I have no idea what most bakeries use to glaze their cakes, but I seriously doubt it is Scharffen Berger. Unfortunately, it's the only brand I can easily obtain. Once the cold weather kicks in, and I've used up a bit more of the chocolate locker in my deep freeze, I'll mail order something with a more suitable flavor profile. Recommendations are very much welcome.

So, my overall impression of Seven-Layer Cake III is just 'eh'. On a scale of 1 to 10, it hovers around 4. My husband (Jewish man from the Bronx) agreed. I was simultaneously hurt and pleased when he did. The cake is finally right, but everything else is wrong. It did look kind of cute, though.

Edited to add: It's actually eight layers instead of seven. That's probably what jinxed it from the beginning.

Edited August 2, 2008 by abooja (log)

[Beanie]

Is there never any kosher butter?  I didn't realize that butter couldn't be kosher, as may cookie recipes such as jewish shortbread do have butter in them.

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Butter can be used, but dairy and meat can't be consumed in the same meal. Here's a primer on kosher dietary laws. Scroll down to the section on "General Rules."

[Nyleve Baar]

No kidding it photographs well - the cake looks gorgeous. Ah well, this time: beauty. Next time: taste.

I probably would have baked the layers on the inside of a sheet pan - lining the bottom with parchment and greasing the sides well. You'd just have to watch that you don't pour the batter in too deep. As for the chocolate, I'd hate to cast aspersions but something tells me that these kosher bakery folk were none too gourmet about the chocolate they used in their cakes back then.

Onward!

Edited August 3, 2008 by Nyleve Baar (log)

[C J Phillips]

What a gorgeous cake! Can't believe it rated only a 4. I am clueless as to what you should do to make it perfect, but remain fascinated by the search and can't wait to try the final recipe.

[abooja]

Thanks for the very nice compliments.

I did wind up baking the one good half of the batter inside the half sheet pan, greased, covered with parchment, then greased again. I had to google what the heck S/P/S from the original recipe meant -- spray/parchment/spray. Must be a cooking school thing.

It's ironic that this cake wound up looking better than it tasted. My cakes usually look quite plain, but taste pretty good. It wasn't disgusting, mind you, just not what I wanted. However, I'll take an ugly cake that tastes delicious over a sexy, bland one anyday.

Now, for a stupid question: any chance this kosher German bakery of my youth would have used Baker's German's Sweet Chocolate? I know it's not German chocolate, but maybe it was widely available back then and they dug the name? (I told you it was a stupid question.) I wonder what kind of bulk chocolate most bakeries used before gourmet chocolates became so widely available.