The French Cake Cooked on a Spit (2018) [video] | Hacker News Reader

The French Cake Cooked on a Spit (2018) [video]

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33 pointsNaOH22 comments

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spit_cake

> Several national variants of spit cakes: Spettekaka, Trdelník, Prügelkrapfen, Baumstriezel, Kürtőskalács, Šakotis, Baumkuchen, Kürtősfánk

> https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2a/Spetteka...

My favorite cake to eat in Japan is the baumkuchen - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumkuchen

I would add sękacz to the list. As the wikipedia article notes, there is evidence that there were spit cakes in ancient Greece.

I never thought I'd see the traditional cake from the region I grew up in on the HN frontpage :)

Never tried it, but apparently it's not that good. Like, super dry, and very basic taste.

I dunno how they make it in other countries, but I can confirm that a well-made German Baumkuchen, coated with chocolate to keep the dough from drying out, is simply delicious. It even got so popular in Japan that they have it in most supermarkets (baumukuhen / バウムクーヘン).

The story of how that even happened is all kinds of amazing in and of itself.

Opposite experience. The versions I've tasted were not dry (unless left out for too long), had a sort of melt-in-your-mouth texture, was sweet, had a specific taste that's hard to name (eggnog?).

They are not dry if they are made properly and eaten straight away. The stuff we can get in the stores is of variable quality (or at least variable storage conditions).

That said, it’s popular cuisine, from regions that were historically not that wealthy. It’s a bit rustic, but there is some beauty in its simplicity.

Yeah, it looks like a fun gimmick but it's basically a butter biscuit with a bit of rum and liqueur, which does most of the heavy lifting there.

Can confirm; looks great but I was disappointed while eating it.

Ironically I'm french but I was aware of the tredelnik and the baumkuchen but not this one

This cake is really funny to me because almost every central european country has a variety of this cake, having unclear roots going back somewhere to middle age germany and "around", and people in the comments always get super nationalistic and angry about this being cake from country X and not from a country of X

The magic taste happens when the batter is exposed to air and heat through the gradual builds of layers?

The magic taste happens with the 2 litres of rum !

But there's not really a magic taste, it's just a fun tradition.

This looks like Baumkuchen, must be relative of sorts

Napoleon's soldier saw the spit cakes from eastern europe and brought it back to France apparently.

You find variations all over Europe

baumkuchen with a lot more centrifugal force!

It's not a french cake, it's been brought to france

It’s not a very good point. Everything was from somewhere else at some point. It resonated in some places and got integrated into local traditions, it’s all there is to it. Yes, there are some things that are spread throughout Europe. They can still be part of local customs.

You're right that people borrow all the time. Cultural exchange is normal. What I charitably suspect the parent was alluding to was the French (though, of course, not exclusively French) tendency to saddle so much of what they've received with French roots. If it weren't for the revolution, we might learn that Jesus himself was a Frenchman!

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