Posted by Hans on October 04, 1997 at 01:55:16:
In Reply to: Re: klecherkuchen,request for recipe or origin posted by Lori A on September 12, 1997 at 18:26:47:
: : I am looking for a recipe for Klecherkuchen, thought to be of the eastern europe origin
: : please dig through your recipe books, perhaps cookbooks from the women of local parishes
: : or church groups might have a recipe hidden away in them.. a challenge for any pastry chef,
: : thanks for your help in advance, chefprb.
: Sounds like it could be a German recipe. Click below for a German recipe message board
The only word in this Mish-Mash that is German is Kuchen, meaning cake, any type of cake, except Torten. Not much to go by.
Klecher sounds like Blecher, the plural of blech, a flat baking sheet with ridges on 3 sides. Much like a large, black cookie sheet.
My grandmother used to bake "blecherkuche" (in Hessian dialect) every weekend after the weekly Rye was put into the stone oven and had to bake for a good 90 minutes. After the oven was cooled down somewhat and swapped clean, the blecherkuchen and other sweet breads were fired and that was close to the end of community baking day, usually a Friday, except for Easter.
The cake would change weekly, depending on the seasonal ingredients available from the farm. The base of the cake remained the same, somewhat like a lean Brioche Dough, just a little sweeter.
The toppings ranged from Rhubarb, Strawberries, Apples, Pears, Plums, Mirabelles, Cherries etc. usually topped with Streusel. The other variety was Bakers Cheese, mixed with yolks, sugar, vanilla, cream and raisins. Much like a cheesecake, just less fat and more crust, also a brioche. These were humongous cakes but I don't remember any leftovers, ever.
It's not that we had them every week. Luckily grandma knew alot about baking and we had quite a variety, every weekend.
As Marie Antoinette said: Let them eat cake!
I haven't had anything quite as delicious in eons since the cakes from stone ovens taste so much better. Nothing one could replicate. The new stone pizza ovens are way too hot to bake cakes in them and cool too rapidly. The big community stone monsters took forever to heat up but also cooled down much slower.
Sincerely,
HWK,CMC