Such – It is the “king of cakes”: the good old tree cake. Now that the first Advent is approaching, it is available again in almost every supermarket – even in distant Japan. “Baumkuchen is one of the most popular cakes in Japan,” says Hideo Kawamoto, President of the Japanese pastry manufacturer Juchheim, and serves the guest a piece of Baumkuchen – fresh from the oven – in a café on Tokyo’s elegant promenade, Omotesando. It was baked according to the original recipe of the German master confectioner Karl Joseph Wilhelm Juchheim, namesake of Kawamoto’s company. It was Juchheim from Kaub am Rhein who brought the Baumkuchen to Japan – under adventurous circumstances.
At the beginning of the 20th century, Juchheim lived with his wife Elise in Qingdao, China, which was a German colony at the time. The couple ran a pastry shop there. During World War I, the Japanese took the area. Juchheim was taken to a prisoner of war and taken to Japan. His wife initially lived alone in occupied Qingdao. Her husband was interned with other Germans in a camp on an island in the bay of the Japanese city of Hiroshima. Juchheim was allowed to bake there. For a show of German handicrafts in an exhibition hall, today’s atomic bomb dome, he baked a tree cake. The Japanese had never seen anything like it before.
dpa
A Baumkuchen from the Japanese pastry manufacturer Juchheim, baked according to an original German recipe.
After the war, the Juchheims settled in Japan and opened their first pastry shop in Yokohama. Today, 100 years later, the German Baumkuchen that they made famous has become a Japanese classic. “Karl Juchheim wanted to give us Japanese something that would make us happy,” explains Kawamoto. Baumkuchen still has this auspicious image in Japan today. Whether at weddings, as a gift for business partners, as a snack in between or as a souvenir – every Japanese knows Baumkuchen.
Baumkuchen with strawberries, roasted green tea or sweet potatoes
It is available cut open or in elegant packaging in pastry shops, in various sizes shrink-wrapped in supermarkets or at train station kiosks and coffee shops across the country. “Regions have their own variant,” explains Kawamoto. Because Baumkuchen, which is called “Baumukuhe” in Japanese, but is sometimes also called “Baamukuhe” or just “Baumu”, has become a Japanese product through and through. There are no fixed rules for making Baumkuchen like in Germany in Japan, explains Kawamoto and smiles behind his protective mask. In Japan today there are Baumkuchen with strawberries, others are baked with roasted green tea, with sweet potatoes, apples and other flavors. Entire Baumkuchen fairs take place in Japan every year, at which countless manufacturers present their products.
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This is how we know it in this country: freshly cut Baumkuchen.
Kawamoto and his colleagues at Juchheim Co boast that they still bake the “real” Baumkuchen according to Karl Juchheim’s basic German recipe – that is, only with the main ingredients butter, eggs, sugar, vanilla, salt and flour. And yet the Baumkuchen has also been refined more and more at Juchheim over the past few decades, the President proudly recounts. Since last year, his company has not used any additives for the production of tree cakes and other pastries. Not for health reasons, but to preserve the bakers’ high level of professionalism, says Kawamoto.
This also flows into the state-of-the-art ovens that the company has developed. “They are equipped with artificial intelligence for this purpose,” explains the boss, while a freshly baked Baumkuchen roll is coming out of the oven. Thanks to modern technology, the ovens could be fed with data that incorporates the respective skills of the individual bakers. Nothing will change in Karl Juchheim’s recipe himself.
Wikipedia/City Hiroshima
Brought the Baumkuchen to Japan: Karl Joseph Wilhelm Juchheim.
When his first shop in Yokohama was destroyed by the great Kanto earthquake in 1923, the Juchheims settled in Kobe and dared to start a new business. Karl Juchheim died one day before Japan’s surrender in World War II. His wife Elise was expropriated and had to go to Germany on the orders of the Allies. However, Juchheim’s former employees made another fresh start in business. Elise returned to Japan in 1953 and worked at the Juchheim company until her death in 1971.
Juchheim has remained one of the best-known brands to this day. The Kobe-based group has around 270 stores and employs around 520 people. Next year the company will celebrate the 100th anniversary of the opening of Karl and Elise Juchheim’s first store in Yokohama.
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