The legendary Prague chocolate cake, like many culinary masterpieces, has its own history. The author of "Prague" is the famous Moscow confectioner Vladimir Mikhailovich Guralnik. This cake, created over 40 years ago, is still very popular today.
Cake "Prague" and its creator
The Prague cake has nothing to do with the Czech capital. Its history is closely connected with the confectionery shop of the Moscow restaurant "Prague", which was opened in honor of the tenth anniversary of the liberation of Prague from the Nazi invaders.
In 1955, sixteen-year-old Vladimir Guralnik got a job in the confectionery department of the restaurant. Having come a long way from an assistant to a master pastry chef, in 1969 he became the head of the workshop.
The menu of the Prague restaurant consisted of dishes of Czech national cuisine, so chefs and pastry chefs from Czechoslovakia often came to the capital of the USSR to exchange experiences. There is an opinion that they brought to Moscow the original recipe for the Prague cake, which contained 4 types of butter cream, used Benedictine and Chartreuse liqueurs, and the cakes were soaked exclusively with rum. Subsequently, the confectioners of the restaurant significantly changed this recipe - this is how the beloved chocolate dessert appeared. However, this version of the creation of well-known pastries is not supported by the facts. On the contrary, in Czech cuisine there is no recipe for the Prague cake.
The authorship of the dessert, which has become a culinary symbol of the USSR, belongs to the head of the confectionery department at the Prague restaurant, Vladimir Mikhailovich Guralnik. He came up with more than 30 original baking recipes, including the no less famous cakes "Bird's milk", "Zdenka", "Wenceslas".
Another myth about the creation of the Prague cake is a paraphrase of the famous Viennese Sacher cake. Visually, these desserts are similar, but they have nothing in common in taste. One of the advantages of "Prague" is the original butter cream, and "Sacher" is a dry cake and is prepared without cream.
Many housewives tried to bake "Prague" at home, choosing and varying the ingredients. Now the recipe for this cake has been published, which corresponds to GOST, and it is possible to cook the famous cake according to all the rules.
Cake "Prague" according to GOST
The traditional cake "Prague" according to GOST has a round shape and consists of 3 layers of biscuit semi-finished product "Prague", interconnected with cream "Prague". The top and sides of the cake are covered with apricot jam and glazed with chocolate fondant, on which a creamy pattern is applied.
According to GOST, 472 grams of Prague biscuit, 359 grams of Prague butter cream, 116 grams of chocolate fudge and 53 grams of fruit and berry jam (preferably apricot jam) are required to make a kilogram cake.
The cake is made of premium wheat flour, natural butter, cocoa powder, eggs, sugar, whole condensed milk, starch syrup, fruit essence and apricot jam or jam.
