Mocha Buttercream: ¼ l cream, ¼ l strong coffee, 100 g sugar, 40 g wheat starch, 2 egg yolks, 320 g butter, 1 pinch salt, the pulp of 1 vanilla pod.
Boil the cream, vanilla, salt, and coffee. Mix sugar, cornstarch, and egg yolks and whisk well with a little of the hot coffee cream, then whisk it all together in a double boiler to make a crème, and cool quickly in cold water, stirring. Beat the butter together with the cold crème until fluffy and refrigerate. Tip from the world champion: if you sift some icing sugar over the crème, no skin will form.
Mocha chocolate bases: 200 g mocha chocolate, 30 g palmin.
Dissolve the well chopped ingredients in a bain-marie, mix well and spread the mixture very thinly on 3 sheets of baking paper so that when it has cooled in the fridge you can cut out 3 thin discs, each 25 cm in diameter.
Chocolate sponge cake without flour: 120 g egg whites, 125 g sugar, 4 egg yolks, 35 g cocoa powder.
Beat the egg whites with the sugar until stiff, fold in the liquid egg yolks and gently fold in the cocoa powder. Using a 9 hole nozzle, pipe a 25cm diameter circle onto a baking tray lined with baking paper. Bake in an oven preheated to 190 degrees for about 15 minutes.
Cointreau truffle filling: 0.1 l cream, 300 g finely chopped white chocolate, 50 g Cointreau, 50 g butter.
Bring the cream to the boil and stir in the chocolate until everything has combined into a homogeneous mass. Then add the butter and, when the mixture has cooled to below 20 degrees, the liqueur. Pour into a 20 cm cake ring and leave to cool. Then cut crosswise into 3 evenly thick slices.
Cake: Place the sponge cake layer on top, place a slice of truffle filling on top, spread the free outer circle with mocha butter cream and cover with one of the 3 chocolate layers. And so on, the last layer being a chocolate base. Spread the top and sides with the remaining mocha buttercream and sift powdered sugar over the finished cake.
At the World Champion Confectioners in Michelstadt
For many generations, the Sieferts were farmers, brewers and innkeepers in their old half-timbered house. It wasn't until their father opened a pastry shop. Bernd Siefert, who says of himself that he always wants to be better and different than others, learned in the house and really got a taste for it.
So he went on the road. To Zurich to Sprüngli, to London to Harrod's, to Paris to Fauchon, all of them prime addresses of fine confectionery. But since he could never stay away for more than half a year at the most - he was needed at home - the business in Michelstadt profited from his intimate knowledge of what his colleagues in the wide world were achieving in patisserie, confectionery and glaçerie, in ice cream making.
Siefert thus never lost touch with his closer home, on the contrary. He is the only confectioner to take part in the "Odenwald Potato Weeks," just as he created a potato stollen that contains only ingredients native to the Odenwald. Dried fruit and hazelnuts, for example (instead of candied lemon peel, candied orange peel and almonds). Everyone likes it, and Siefert sends it as far away as Zimbabwe. Like his Sacher cake, by the way, all the way to Vienna. Not to forget the three thousand or so jars of homemade jam a year, which are really distinctive and taste wonderfully of fruit, strawberries with vanilla or apples with basil, for example.
There are around sixty varieties of chocolate truffles on the counter, and in summer the homemade ice cream is of course the most popular. Because of him, lovers come especially from far away. One of them, says Bernd Siefert, makes twenty balls a day and takes a good supply home with him. The man is right, where else can you get chocolate ice cream with 70% (!) cocoa content or sorbets with 50% fruit? And the ball only costs as much as anywhere else, with even the ice cream wafers being homemade.
Quality fanatic Siefert, who in 1997 won the title of "World Champion of Confectioners" after a 3-day marathon against sixteen contenders from all over the world, naturally also works with the best of all vanilla varieties, the rare and particularly expensive Tahitian vanilla. Once you have enjoyed its fine aroma, you will find the usual bourbon vanilla almost vulgar. Then, as Siebert thinks of everything, the noble sweet wines matching cakes and confectionery are available, like Muscat de Rivesaltes. Or Banyuls, the best accompaniment (next to port) to chocolate.
There is plenty of it in the "Himmlische Kaffee-Sympho-nie". That's the name of the recipe from the world champion. Even amateurs can handle this cake - if they work accurately. Because unlike chefs, pastry chefs have to weigh their ingredients meticulously. "Sometimes with the letter scale", tells Bernd Siefert.
Konditorei Café Siefert
Braunstr. 17
64720 Michelstadt/Odenwald
Tel: 06061-3068, Fax: 12118
Internet: <link http: www.cafesiefert.de _blank>www.cafesiefert.de
from Waldemar Thomas