Sometimes you get to find out how a recipe should have been done.
A while ago, I went out to visit a friend who had just finished a particularly nasty semester of grad school. To reward himself, he had ordered a sachertorte from the actual Hotel Sacher in Vienna. If you're willing to pay over $80 for a single cake, they will ship it to you in a cute wooden box.
This cake came pre-cut into some really big slices. Like, those are some American-sized wedges of cake. I guess if you're paying $80 for a cake, a small sliver will not do.
Having made a sachertorte quite some time ago, I was really curious how my attempt compared to the real thing. And... well, the Hotel Sacher's tasted just like the one I made. I shouldn't be surprised. I got the recipe from a book called Austrian Cooking and Baking by Gretel Beer, an Austrian cookbook writer. She would have definitely known how one of Austria's most famous cakes should taste.
And furthermore, this was easy to make, so I didn't really have a chance to mess it up. Granted, I flubbed the icing immediately thereafter. But the cake itself didn't have any finicky steps or other ways to accidentally ruin it.
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| The whipped cream hides the bad icing beautifully. |
And so, if you want to have a genuine Austrian sachertorte, the recipe from Austrian Cooking and Baking is just as good as what you'd get if you ordered it from the home country. Gretel Beer's recipe is almost certainly not the one they use, but you won't taste the difference.
If you live in the US and really want a genuine imported Austrian cake in a stamped wooden box (or just don't feel like making one for yourself), you better order fast. The Austrian postal service (and over 80 other countries) has discontinued all parcel shipments to the US because a certain special someone keeps playing with tariffs, and who knows how long private couriers will continue putting up with this.
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