Gugelhupf

With the back of a spoon make a small hollow around centre of gugelhupf – to keep the cake base more level when cooked.

When the gugelhupf is cold, dust lightly with icing sugar, then make the icing. Sieve the icing sugar into a bowl and blend with enough rum to make a thin icing. Drizzle half of the icing over the gugelhupf.

When the gugelhupf is almost completely risen, set a rack at the lower third of the oven and preheat to 375 degrees.

However, if you arrived a quarter of an hour before that, and ordered your coffee and whipped cream, you didn’t have to pay the five-kreuzer supplement for the music, only the standard thirty for coffee and fifteen for a slice of gugelhupf cake.

It would be a pity not to try something to eat – for a ‘lighter’ alternative many cafés serve slices of gugelhupf, a Viennese marbled madeira cake, a simply delicious companion to coffee.

I baked gugelhupfs in great varieties with raisins or with coconut or with chocolate. There was always a gugelhupf in the house and as these cakes are so large there was plenty of it and who ever came to visit us was treated to a slice of it.

Place cold gugelhupf in oven and bake until top is light golden brown and cake tester comes out clean, about 40 to 45 minutes (a smaller pan may take a few minutes longer), rotating pan front to back halfway through.