The Oldest Cake Recipe in the World

Monday 20th of April 2020

The Oldest Cake Recipe in the World

The oldest cake recipe and one of the oldest recipes in the world, the Linzer Torte comes from over 300 years ago in Austria. Named after the Austrian city of Linz, this short cake with a crumbly, buttery pastry shell is perfect for breakfast.

Ingredients

• 250 g butter

• 250 g flour

• 125 g icing sugar

• 150 g ground hazelnuts (or almonds)

• 2 tbsp breadcrumbs

• 1 egg

• 1 egg yolk

• a generous quantity of cinnamon powder

• a pinch of ground cloves

• grated lemon rind or lemon juice

• wafers for layering, to taste

• egg for coating

• redcurrant jam for coating

• butter for the mold

• flaked almonds

How to make

1) Combine flour with cubes of butter and lightly rub the mixture between fingers to create crumbs, then add in cinnamon, ground cloves, nuts, a little salt, and lemon juice or lemon rind; for more colorful pastry add an extra egg yolk with the egg.

2) Quickly knead all the ingredients to achieve a smooth, shortcrust pastry. Shape the dough into a ball, cover with film and let rest in a cool place for approx. 30 minutes.

3) Preheat the oven to 180 °C and prepare a suitably sized spring form cake for baking by greasing its bottom and edges, then dusting it with some breadcrumbs.

4) Take a little over half of the dough and, using your knuckles, press the dough into the base of the tin. From the remaining dough create several smaller rolls for the lattice decoration and one big one to go around the edge.

5) If you prefer, cover the base of the pastry with wafers, then spread over with smoothly stirred jam while leaving a 1 cm border all around for the edging. Take the big roll that you’ve prepared and place it in the space assigned for the edging and press gently.

6) From the thinner rolls form a lattice design on top of the cake. Sprinkle with flakes of almonds to taste and coat with a beaten egg.

7) Bake for 50-60 minutes in a preheated oven, take out, leave to cool and ideally, leave to stand for a day wrapped in film. Dust with icing sugar.