Marble Gugelhupf
Introduction
I have my new static blogging engine up and running!
My first task is to see if it’s up to the job; and what better way to exercise it than with cake!
I first published this recipe in 2014 (on my old Frog blog) — but it’s still good!
My partner has an earthenware Gugelhupf mould (or is it a form?) and when we were last at the German Deli (Hansel & Pretzel — worth a visit if you’re within striking distance of Ham/Richmond) we saw some of these cakes at the counter.
“Ah, but we have the means to make this at home, we should try to make it ourselves”, thought I.
And so I did. We didn’t feel too bad about not buying their cake, since we had also stocked up with all sorts of sausages and other German goodness.
I have cooked this cake twice (so far)… once at the weekend for friends, and because it was so splendid, again tonight for my work colleagues.
I needed a recipe, and the traditional recipes require a lot of Kartoffelmehl — starch to you and me — and I’ve not really cooked with starch, so I cowardly chose to follow the recipe below (which I found on the Interwebs, of course).
Even though the form is glazed, the batter is too sticky not to stick to glass. So you’ll need to protect it with a layer of butter, with flour (or breadcrumbs, which seem traditional) sprinkled upon it†.
This is, as much as anything, a log of what I did — so that I can reproduce at will! If you have a kitchen setup exactly like mine, you can follow the instructions exactly as I write them. Otherwise, they should be treated as kind of guidelines.
Equipment
-
The Gugelhupf Form itself
-
A Kenwood Chef
-
Either the plastic K Beater or the Balloon Whisk… not sure which is better yet
-
Bowl: a bowl capable of taking the 375 g flour
-
Jug: a jug capable of taking 5 eggs and ½ cup milk
-
Scales to weigh sugar then flour — they can be packed away after that
-
½ Cup measuring — er — cup really. Which can get put away after the milk goes into the eggs.[1]
-
Spoons! Without which you’ll never be able to properly shift the batter, or scoop out ludicrous amounts of cocoa powder from the container)
Ingredients
250 g Butter |
That’s a whole pack… no need to measure, slice it into cubes and drop them straight into the mixing bowl |
250 g Sugar |
Well that’s going to be mixed in straight away. Use Bowl to weigh the sugar into before emptying it into the mixing bowl |
375 g Flour |
Weighed out into Bowl |
1 pinch Salt |
Put into flour in Bowl |
1 package Baking Powder by Dr Oetker |
Put into flour (and salt) in Bowl |
½ tsp. Vanilla Powder |
I used: “6” Ndali Organic Vanilla Powder which does an awesome job of making the cake, and the kitchen smell vanillary (this replaces “1 Package Vanilla sugar Dr Oetker and 1 tsp. liquid vanilla” in the original) |
5 eggs |
into the Jug |
½ Cup (⅛ l) Milk |
Into the Jug with the eggs |
3-4 tsp. Cocoa Powder (unsweetened) |
Green and Black’s ooh! |
Butter, Flour (or Breadcrumbs) for the Form |
See the handy hint below |
Method
(Instructions in bold are quoted directly from the German World recipe.)
-
Preheat oven to 190° C: Why do I always have to look at the bottom of a recipe to remind me to preheat the oven?
-
Grease the Gugelhupf form thoroughly†: to help release the cake from the form
-
Mix butter and sugar: I tried to get a nice paste going there
-
Add eggs The milk is in the eggs.
When I whisked this the eggs seemed to curdle, which is odd because there isn’t anything other than dairy and sugar in there. I ignored that, assuming that the flour would deal with it. -
Add baking powder/flour/salt: Already in a mixture waiting in Bowl, sifting it in also helps mix these ingredients.
-
This is where the difference between the beater and the whisk comes in. When I whisked it, the batter came to a smooth paste — like “Angel Delight” (tasted like it too, once the chocolate was added later)
-
-
Add vanilla: Whisk it in
-
Add half of the dough into form: Two things wong here:
-
Unless I’m making it too runny: it’s not a dough, it’s a batter. That sounds like Tim being a bit pedantic, but it is a necessary distinction. Because
-
“half of” a dough is easy to measure. “Half of” a fluid batter in a round-bottommed mixing bowl is significantly less so.
So read this as: “Add a fraction of the batter, chosen as to leave a similar looking fraction in the mixing bowl, into the form”
-
-
Mix remaining dough with cocoa powder: See… the original recipe now uses the word remaining. An acknowledgement that there is unlikely to be another “half” left in the bowl. Use the intended amount of cocoa powder anyway, since you want the Guglehupf to have the same degree of chocolatiness no matter how much batter is left.
-
Place cocoa dough on top of the other dough
-
With a knife or fork go through the cake several times: I used a fork to scoop from the bottom to the top of the cake once, all the way round. Then repeated for a second lap. So, in effect, two scoops were done.
-
Bake in pre-heated oven on 375° F for 60 minutes: That’s 190° C. Way too long… way too hot! I went to check my cake at 45–50 mins, and although the oven was preheated to 190°, it went down to 170–180 fairly soon. I want cake, not charcoal.
-
Test the cake for cookedness: “Do the test with a needle or knife: Poke into the cake to check if it is done. If the needle is still sticky, the cake is not done.” I used a bamboo skewer.
-
I put it into the cake… and it came out sticky.
-
I put it in again, and it was still sticky!
-
Then I realised that it will always be sticky, unless the cake is capable of changing the very nature of bamboo.
-
I could tell that the Gugelhupf was cooked by the fact that the batter no longer adhered to the stick.
-
-
Let cool off
-
Take out of the form
-
Dust with powdered sugar: Here’s a thing: I went to the shops looking for “Icing Sugar”. Turns out that, at Sainsbury’s you can buy Fondant Icing Sugar, Royal Icing Sugar and (I guess to cater for common sugar shoppers like me)
[BLANK]Icing Sugar.
Some time I should concern myself with what the difference is.
Version Control
The bakes I have done so far have been:
| Date | Variant | Result |
|---|---|---|
2014-08-29 |
|
Nyommed by everyone |
2014-09-02 |
|
People went for seconds! Heavier than a sponge, lighter than a bread. So I think we can safely call it a “cake”. |
Top Tips
These are things I figured out while making the cake. At least I should follow these hints.
† Grease the whole Gugelhupf with butter. In fact I used the “buttery spread” in the fridge, all I want is “glue”. Put in quite some flour: looking like ⅓ tablespoon(?) or so. Knock the flour round the outside circumference of the 'hupf by tapping the outside. Straight forward enough.
It’s getting the flour up onto the “cone” in the middle that’s the tricky part. Rather than tapping the flour round, get the cone horizontal, with flour accumulated above it, and hit the form down the axis of the cone. By some weird function of mechanics, this causes the flour to come down the cone!
(The same dynamic forces force the flour to come forward at the bottom of the outside edge, so watch out for it spilling from there.)
References
- Marble Gugelhupf Cake: GERMAN WORLD MAGAZINE
-
The original recipe. Although I’ve put my own ingredients into the mix, as it were. And found a place for the milk — which was either to slate the cook’s thirst or completely forgotten in the original recipe.
- Kenwood’s Idea of how to make a “Strawberries and Cream Sponge”
-
I found this on Kenwood’s site, since I was concerned that the whole thing would come out too heavy. What I ended up with was not a sponge. But for reference, if I want a sponge — I’ll likely use
Thank you for reading! Feel free to leave comments or reach out with questions.