Hand on heart: cake pops, cupcakes and donuts are all well and good. But nothing against a good piece of Danube wave, butter cake or cheese cream cake. When these came to the coffee table, people let cake be cake and gave little thought to their calorie or beauty values. Back then, the pastries didn’t have to win as many hearts as possible on social media, just those of family and friends – and grandma always managed that.
There was nothing with spelled flour and agave syrup; instead, there was no skimping on butter and sugar. What was on the table should be enjoyable and not primarily healthy. In many households, coffee time was the afternoon reward with which you could do something good for yourself and your family, the tradesmen, neighbors or anyone who happened to be stopping by.
To this day, many families still have family cakes that are regularly served on the table for birthdays. Some want the classic cheesecake, which had nothing to do with New York cheesecake, others swear by fried egg cake and Swiss roll, which couldn’t be missing a good whip of cream. These cakes are not only delicious, they usually also have a story to tell. One cake reminds us of banging pots at children’s birthday parties, the other of warm afternoons in our grandmother’s garden. They give us a lightness that we can really use in times of pandemic.
That’s why we want to quickly revive Grandma’s best cake recipes before they are completely forgotten. In the editorial team we realize: We all have relatively similar memories of the classics of the past, and yet here and there there is a secret ingredient that is hardly known today. One or two cakes from the past hold a surprise, but above all a large portion of nostalgia for us.