Spanische Windtorte

The first time I saw a Spanische Windtorte I was eleven years old, standing on my toes in front of a Konditorei window in Vienna with Gretel and my grandmother Eva. It looked like something built by an architect who happened to work in sugar. A white tower of meringue, piped with rosettes and scrolls, dusted so lightly with powdered sugar that it seemed to glow from inside. Gretel pressed her nose to the glass and said, "That is the most Viennese thing in this city, and most Viennese people have never tasted one."

She was right then, and she'd be more right now. The Spanische Windtorte is nearly gone. A handful of Konditoreien still make it. Most pastry students at GAFA have heard of it but never built one. It takes hours, not because the technique is brutally difficult, but because meringue demands patience. You pipe the base, you pipe the rings, you pipe the lid with its rosettes and flourishes, and then you dry everything in a barely warm oven until each piece is bone-dry and light as paper. You stack the rings into a hollow tower, fill it with unsweetened Schlagobers and fresh berries, set the decorated lid on top, and bring it to the table looking like a centerpiece from a Habsburg banquet.

I want you to make this. Not because it's easy, it isn't. But because it's not as hard as it looks, and because every one of these that someone builds in their kitchen is a small act of rescue. The ingredients are egg whites, sugar, cream, and fruit. The technique is piping circles and drying them slowly. The result is something that makes people stop talking when you carry it into the room. Gretel always said the secrets of Viennese cuisine live in the things people stopped bothering to make. This is one of them. Bother.