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Vienna Cake or Kauglauff
1 pound of light dough. 22 ounces of butter. 8 ounces of sugar. 15 eggs. 20 ounces of flour. Half pint of cream. Half cup of brandy. 1 pound of almonds. Mix up and beat and raise according to preceding directions. Blanch and split the almonds and mix half of them in the cake; use the remainder to stick all over the moulds with butter before the dough is put in. These mixtures all make the dough like fritter batter, just thick enough for almonds, fruit, etc., not to sink.
Shred citron or candied orange peel, pistachio nuts and the like are added at option. Sometimes the cakes are served hot, separated into layers with a sharp knife, and jelly spread between.
This is a yeast-raised kugelhopf built on a piece of pre-fermented "light dough" rather than on fresh yeast added directly, which is why the original assumes you have read the preceding pages. Everything here is by weight, and the proportions only work if you keep it that way.
- The pound of light doughThis is a pound of ordinary sweet bread dough already risen once. The recipe points back to "preceding directions" for the raising, but the formula for the light dough itself is not given here. A well-fermented straight dough of about 10 oz flour, 5 oz milk, yeast and a little salt, risen until doubled, will stand in for it. Nothing else in the ingredient list provides leavening, so this piece of dough is the engine of the cake.
- Weights, not cups20 ounces of flour is roughly 4 1/2 cups; 22 ounces of butter is 5 1/2 sticks; 8 ounces of sugar is about 1 1/8 cups. Period eggs may well have run smaller than today's large eggs; reckon on 13 to 15 large eggs, or better, 23 to 26 oz of cracked egg by weight.
- Half a pint, half a cupHalf a pint of cream is 1 cup. The half cup of brandy is measured as we would measure it. The recipe does not say at what point either is added, only to "mix up and beat."
- The consistency is the testThe line about fritter batter is the hinge of the recipe. This is a heavy batter, not a kneadable dough — slack enough to pour, thick enough that split almonds and citron hang suspended. If it is thin enough for the fruit to sink, hold back cream; if it will not fall from the spoon, add it.
- Beating and raisingThe book gives no method beyond "mix up and beat and raise according to preceding directions," so what follows is a reconstruction: cream butter and sugar, beat the eggs in gradually, then work in the light dough with the flour, cream and brandy and beat hard. Then a single slow rise in the buttered, almond-lined moulds, likely 1 1/2 to 2 hours given the weight of fat.
- The mouldsA kugelhopf mould is a deep fluted ring, traditionally glazed earthenware; a heavy tube pan works. Butter it thickly and press the split almonds against the sides and into the flutes before the batter goes in, so they bake into the crust as decoration.
- Oven and yieldNo temperature is given. A rich yeast cake of this size wants a moderate oven, 350F, for 45 to 60 minutes, tented with foil if the almond crust colours early; a skewer should come out clean. The full quantity is a very large batch — figure two 10-inch ring cakes, each serving 12 or more.
- Serving hot with jellyThe last sentence describes splitting the cakes hot, separating them into layers with a sharp knife and spreading jelly between. A firm preserve holds better than a loose jam, and a long knife makes the cleanest cut.
Kugelhopf — spelled here Kauglauff, one of the various English renderings of the German Gugelhupf — is the tall fluted ring cake of Alsace, Austria and southern Germany, said by tradition to be named for the shape of its mould rather than for anything in the batter. The word is often traced to Gugel or Kugel, a hood or ball, plus Hupf, a hop or rise, though the derivation is contested and the second element has been explained in several ways. Such rich, egg-and-butter yeast goods were part of the repertoire that Austrian and German immigrant confectioners brought into the profession. That professional context explains the scale and the shorthand: fifteen eggs and nearly a pound and a half of butter is a shop batch, and "raise according to preceding directions" assumes a reader who already keeps fermented dough on hand as a matter of course.