After reading Mimi Sheraton's chronicles of her search for Baumkuchen in the New Yorker, I was inspired to start my own quest, albeit on a much smaller scale. Unlike the aforementioned Ms. Sheraton, I have no great history with Baumkuchen, but that is not to say that I have none. While it may not be a fifty year saga, I have been curious about the cake since I had it in Hong Kong a few years ago (actually, it's hard to be precise about the exact location I first had the cake, because I bought it at the airport and at it on the plane probably while suspended somewhere over the Pacific).
While at the airport, I was looking for snacks at Muji, a Japanese based chain. It had always seemed odd that my first introduction to Germany's "king of cakes" would be from a Japanese chain in a Chinese airport (Apparently Baumkuchen has been popular in Japan since 1919 because of a captured German baker who opened bakery in Kobe). At Muji, they have a large selection of different flavored Baumkuchen including banana, sweet potato and corn?! I had bought one and eaten it about midway through the flight back to Chicago. The texture was a little more springy than a pound cake, and it had a nice mild flavor. I spent the rest of the flight regretting not buying more and plotting ways of getting a supply to Chicago.
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