I made the "King of cakes" for the first time. I was curious about this cake when I first saw them in the book "professional baking". I was first introduced to cakes with lots of thin layers by my Indonesian friend who gave us a box of "kueh lapis" – a traditional cake to Indonesian Chinese during Chinese New Year. That kueh lapis is more moist and softer than this baumkuchen. What is amazing about these two multi-layer cakes is that I can "peel" one by one layer easily. It is very interesting to do that, of course when you have some time to spare while chitchatting with friends.
It takes lots of time and patience to make this cake. I had to stand by the oven all of the baking time until I finished the last batch of the batter- each batch was only 30g. The method of baking this cake is very new to me, so I over-baked some layers, that’s why my cake didn’t have a uniform color. Still, I felt happy with this first trial as the cake looked more natural. How time consuming and complicated the baking process is, it is not comparable with the traditional way of making this tree cake with the turning spit.
