I have fond memories of Petit fours at Christmastime, so I think that is why multilayered cakes catch my eye and my taste buds on the internet. The Doberge cake is a multi-layered cake. Doberge Cake originated in one of my favorite cities, New Orleans. This is the photograph from a Handel's Bakery Facebook post which caught my eye and sent my dessert sensitivities researching:
The history of this dessert is traceable in a cookbook, Let's Bake with Beulah Ledner: A Legendary New Orleans Lady by Maxine Wolchansky and also on the internet. Much unlike my previous post inspired by the 1000-year history of the Cannoli, we know the Doberge cake was created by Beulah Ledner.
Beulah began selling her baked goods out of her home during the Depression of the 1930s in order to make ends meet. Her in-house bakery would eventually grow, and she would have a separate building for her bakery business. Her career had some ups and downs including two years she had to take off for ill health while World War II was raging. But she would have a long flourishing life of creating baked masterpieces for New Orleans and the surrounding communities. She learned to bake from her mother, as many of us have. Beulah was influenced by German and Jewish recipes, although the Doberge cake she created is of Hungarian/Austrian influence. It is called "dobos" cake in Europe. But in New Orleans they love French cooking and language, so when she creatively adapted this cake to make a new version of it, she astutely changed the name of her cake to Doberge in order for it to be accepted readily in New Orleans culture. (Similar to what Roman candy did, which I wrote about in a previous blog.)
Beulah Ledner was an accomplished baker, pastry chef, but what made her famous was her Doberge cake. The original European dobos had buttercream frosting in the layers and a hard caramel glaze on top. Beulah's Doberge cake has 9 genoise (spongecake naturally leavened with eggs) cake layers filled in between with custard. She iced the cake with buttercream frosting and put a thin layer of fondant on top. (Fondant is a combination of sugar and water to make the topping candy-like.)
Beulah passed away at 94, but her legacy lives on in New Orleans. I hope during my next visit to New Orleans to enjoy the Doberge cake. Meanwhile, I can learn about it and dream. I also wanted to include a photo of Beulah (below), which I found in a "Sweet Story" by Carolyn Kolb 6/1/2008.*
Sources:
*https://www.myneworleans.com/sweet-story/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doberge_cake
Google dictionary
Written by Roberta Whitman Hoff
