Baumkuchen, The Original Tree cake

After my Tree cake post I had lots of interesting comments about the dish and have found out some very interesting facts about this dish myself, having gained the recipe from an award winning restaurant in Lancashire , I had no reason to believe it was anything but a local dish, however looking deeper into it , it seems that its merely an interpretation of a German Cake known as Baumkuchen and it is also made in Japan in a similar way to the German cake.

Baumkuchen is actually made by pouring the cake batter or brushing the batter onto a rotating spit ! as the spit rotates and more batter is added it becomes wider and creates the rings of  Sponge layers once sliced.
This link has some great information about the dish

Cooked over the hob

Batter coated BBQ stick

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumkuchen

The Twiggy cake

Today I thought I would have a little play with the idea of Baumkuchen  but on a much smaller scale as i do not own a spit roast machine other than my BBQ.

• I simply made the Tree cake mix and thinly coated a BBQ stick  Held it over a low gas hob and allowed it to cook the first layer whilst rotating the stick,  

• I was surprised how well this method worked although the mix did start to drip a little. After each layer i drizzled over some melted apricot jam and then repeated the process again.

• Note to self when wooden BBQ sticks get hot they set on fire !!! 

Glazed with apricot jam

• I managed to make 5 rather ugly looking layers before the weight of the cake was finally to much for the BBQ stick, and it snapped. However when the final layer of apricot jam cooled and encased the chard cake,it looked  like it had been stuck in amber for hundreds of years and looked quite amazing.

 Another cake layer

• I will defiantly be trying this bizarre method again  possibly soaking the BBQ sticks in water over night to avoid the fire hazard, maybe thicker sticks too..

Final chard Twigglet

• I took some amateur photo of my phone and you may agree that the end product is more of a Twig cake, rather then a Tree cake!!  ( A New Cake is born maybe )