Rehrücken

Rehrücken fooled me the first time I saw it. I was seven, maybe eight, in a Konditorei in Salzburg during one of those annual trips with Gretel and my grandmother Eva. Behind the glass case sat what I was certain was a small roast, dark and ridged, with neat rows of white larding along the top. Gretel laughed when I asked why there was meat next to the Torten. She bought me a slice. It was chocolate. Dense, dark, almond-scented chocolate with a glaze so glossy I could see the shop lights reflected in it. The blanched almonds I'd mistaken for larding strips cracked between my teeth. I didn't say a word until I'd finished every crumb.

That's the joke at the heart of Rehrücken, and the Viennese love a good joke. The whole cake is designed to look like a Rehsattel, a saddle of venison, the kind of grand roast you'd serve at a Habsburg hunting lodge. The ridged mold gives it the shape. The dark chocolate glaze gives it the color of roasted game. The almonds pressed into the ridges mimic the larding needles a cook would thread through lean venison to keep it moist. It's pastry dressed as Sunday roast, and it has been making people smile in Austrian Konditoreien for nearly two centuries.

The cake itself is serious. Ground almonds replace most of the flour, which gives the crumb that dense, moist quality that lasts for days without drying out. You melt good dark chocolate into butter, fold in whipped egg whites for just enough lift, and let the almonds do the rest. The glaze is nothing more than chocolate and butter, poured over the cooled cake in one confident motion. If you've never worked with a Rehrücken mold before, don't worry. The mold does the hard work. You just fill it, bake it, and turn it out. The shape does the rest.