Except nobody knew what baumkuchen was, much less how to use the oven.

However, the layering process for making baumkuchen can continue until the cakes are quite large.

The origins of baumkuchen and where it was first baked are disputed.

Additionally, baumkuchen may be covered with sugar or chocolate glaze.

Gauweiler has been baking baumkuchen at Cake Box ever since.

He and his wife, Loretta, took baumkuchen making to heart and baked it for local festivals.

This publication puts the origin of baumkuchen as far back as 1581, the year the cookbook was first published.

A bear that runs a baumkuchen (European cake) shop in the middle of the woods in another dimension.

Popular items include: koyama roll, custard pudding, and baumkuchen.

"I guess Gastreich wanted to be remembered as the only baumkuchen maker in the state," Alspach says.

The horizontally layered version results in a baumkuchen that is more like a conventional cake in shape.

"Paul is so good, he's a real craftsman, and I remember we both baked baumkuchen" at Südstadt, says Rehm.

It was in a German exhibition hall that Juchheim began baking and selling baumkuchen in Japan.

With some recipes, the fully baked and cooled baumkuchen is first coated with marmalade or jam, and then covered with chocolate.

The characteristic rings that appear when sliced resemble tree rings, and give the cake its German name, Baumkuchen, which translates to "tree cake".

Gauweiler's son, Eric, also works in the bakery, preparing puff pastry in the afternoons for the next day's viennoiserie, but he has yet to learn to make baumkuchen.

A New Cookbook"), the first cookbook written for professional chefs by Marx Rumpolt, there is a recipe for baumkuchen."

Some years later, his wife returned to help a Japanese company open a chain of bakeries under the Juchheim name that further helped spread baumkuchen's popularity in Japan.

"It's considered a privilege to bake baumkuchen," says Gauweiler, who is 72 years old, trim, spectacled, and has a shock of hair nearly as white as his chef's coat.

Demand doubled this year when a New Yorker article mentioned his bakery, and Gauweiler made 250 pounds of baumkuchen, also known as spit cake, over the holiday season.

The delicacies of the town are Baumkuchen, Salzwedeler (Altmärker) Wedding-Soup and Tiegelbraten (mutton).

One theory is that baumkuchen was invented in the German town of Salzwedel, a story the town itself popularizes, and has been made there since at least the 19th century.

Some of the best known products are Baumkuchen from Salzwedel and Halloren chocolate globes from Germany's oldest chocolate factory in Halle.

Šakotis (also called raguotis) - a Lithuanian variant of German baumkuchen, with a very distinctive branching form; it is essentially a poundcake grilled layer by layer.

Gauweiler, a native of Hanover, Germany, whose journeys also eventually led him to California had baked baumkuchen, or "tree cake," on exactly the same type of oven back home.