The Kyiv cake ( ) is a

dessert Dessert is a course (food), course that concludes a meal; the course consists of sweet foods, such as cake, biscuit, ice cream, and possibly a beverage, such as dessert wine or liqueur. Some cultures sweeten foods that are more commonly umami, ...

cake Cake is a flour confection usually made from flour, sugar, and other ingredients and is usually baked. In their oldest forms, cakes were modifications of bread, but cakes now cover a wide range of preparations that can be simple or elabor ...

produced in

Kyiv Kyiv, also Kiev, is the capital and most populous List of cities in Ukraine, city of Ukraine. Located in the north-central part of the country, it straddles both sides of the Dnieper, Dnieper River. As of 1 January 2022, its population was 2, ...

Ukraine Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It is the List of European countries by area, second-largest country in Europe after Russia, which Russia–Ukraine border, borders it to the east and northeast. Ukraine also borders Belarus to the nor ...

since December 6, 1956Вечерние Вести. . Retrieved 2012-12-06. by the Karl Marx Confectionery Factory which is now a subsidiary of the Roshen corporation. The cake has emerged as a symbol of Kyiv, largely due to its brand name and packaging featuring the depiction of a

horse chestnut The genus ''Aesculus'' ( or ), with notable species including buckeye and horse chestnut, comprises 13–19 species of flowering plants in the family Sapindaceae. They are trees and shrubs native to the temperate Northern Hemisphere, with ...

leaf, which was present on the

Coat of Arms of Kyiv The coat of arms of Kyiv features the Archangel Michael officially named "Saint Michael the Archistrategos" (, the title of chief-general in Ancient Greece), wielding a flaming sword and a shield on an azure field. History The coat of arms tr ...

during the Soviet era. The cake consists of two light layers of

meringue Meringue ( , ) is a type of dessert or candy, of French cuisine, French origin, traditionally made from Whisk, whipped egg whites and sugar, and occasionally an acid, acidic ingredient such as lemon, vinegar, or potassium bitartrate, cream of t ...

with

hazelnut The hazelnut is the fruit of the hazel tree and therefore includes any of the nuts deriving from species of the genus '' Corylus'', especially the nuts of the species ''Corylus avellana''. They are also known as cobnuts or filberts according to ...

s covered in a chocolate glaze, and filled with a

buttercream Buttercream, also referred to as butter icing (food), icing or butter frosting, is used for either filling (cooking), filling, coating or cake decorating, decorating cakes. The main ingredients are butter and some type of sugar. Buttercream is ...

-like filling.

History

Once confectioners forgot to put some amount of egg-white for the biscuit in a cooler. The next morning the chef Kostiantyn Petrenko, with the help of 17-year-old assistant Nadiia Chornohor, in order to hide the mistake of his colleagues, spread the frozen cakes with buttercream, strewed with powder, decorated with floral ornaments. The recipe of the Kyiv cake has changed with time: in the 1970s, bakers perfected the process of making the egg-white and nut mixture. They then started to add hazelnuts, and began experimenting with adding peanuts and cashews; however, these nuts were expensive and increased the cake's cost, so the factory returned to using hazelnuts. The Soviet Union in those years actively supported India, which paid with goods. Thus, in 1956, the USSR received a huge batch of cashew nuts. The party instructed the country's confectioners to create a dessert using these nuts, and the Kyiv factory named after Karl Marx was most capable of doing so. At the factory, they say: "The author of the recipe and production technology of the Kyiv cake is Kostiantyn Petrenko. We had such a head of the biscuit shop, he once worked as a master. The recipe and technology were developed in 1956. The creation of the cake was preceded by experiments for several years with ancient, exquisite recipes, because nothing appears out of nowhere."

References

External links

Article in the KyivPost
{{DEFAULTSORT:Kyiv Cake Ukrainian pastries Culture in Kyiv Soviet cuisine Ukrainian brands Soviet brands Cashew dishes Brand name desserts Layer cakes Ukrainian cakes Hazelnut dishes

History

See also

References

External links