Prinzregententorte

The Prinzregententorte was created in Munich in 1886 to celebrate the assumption of power by Prince Regent Luitpold of Bavaria, who took the regency after his nephew Ludwig II drowned in the Starnberger See in June of that year under circumstances that were never fully explained. Luitpold was 64 at the time, a careful and well-liked administrator who would govern Bavaria for 26 years without ever claiming the Bavarian throne. The cake built for the occasion had, according to popular account, as many sponge layers as Bavaria had administrative districts.

The confectioner Heinrich Georg Erbshäuser is most often credited with the first version, though multiple Munich patisseries claimed authorship in the years that followed. The construction is exacting: each of the seven thin génoise layers is separately baked, cooled, and spread with a praline chocolate buttercream before assembly. The outside is finished with a poured dark-chocolate glaze that cuts cleanly to reveal the striped interior.

Torte enters German from the Italian torta, which the Romans borrowed from Late Latin torta, a round loaf possibly related to torquere, to twist. By the eighteenth century the word had narrowed in Viennese and Munich usage to mean a layered cake specifically. Prinzregent, literally ruling prince, compresses the office into a single honorific that did not transfer to other rulers: the cake is the only lasting monument to the word in everyday language.

The Prinzregententorte became a Bavarian export when Munich confectioneries began shipping it in tins to the rest of Germany and to German communities abroad in the early twentieth century. Today it is the most recognized Bavarian celebration cake and appears in every konditorei window in the state. Its seven layers have taken on a mnemonic life of their own: visitors often count them before eating.