Nick Malgieri describes Vienna as the world capital of cakes in his introduction to the recipe for Viennese Raisin Coffee Cake.  Aha:  perhaps it’s not the culture, history, music, and architecture…

 that make Vienna one of my favorite cities–it’s the desserts!

Only appropriate that I make this cake for the Modern Baker Challenge, given that I have a kugelhopf mold.  (Yes, rather than a bundt cake mold.  I told you I love Vienna.)  I’m jumping around a bit here, I do acknowledge (what’s that you say?  I haven’t even finished the assigned chapter, “yeast risen specialties”, yet?).  But I can’t bear to think of making all those cakes all at once (I just got off the baby weight!) and, less virtuously, I don’t want to wait.

What I found interesting is that this cake is raised by both whipped egg whites and baking powder.  In that way it is similar to the other kugelhopf that I made, which was raised by egg whites and yeast.  I think this gave the cake a bit of a drier texture (I have noticed that cakes in Prague were often dry, and I think it is a result of using a meringue to raise the cakes).  Cakes like Sachertorte are always served with a dollop of whipped cream,

and, while far more modest a cake, I think a similar treatment would serve this cake well. 

After all these fancy photos, here’s my pictures of the cake itself, a good all-purpose cake.  I think you could dress it up as I mentioned above, or with a nice fruit compote or coulis, but as it’s not too sweet and not too fussy you can have it anytime of day.