Frankfurter Kranz

A ring-shaped cake is decorated with golden nut granules and red fruit. Evoking a crown, the Frankfurter Kranz is a cake associated with Frankfurt, the coronation city. Kranz means ring or wreath. Beneath its ornate surface, the inside consists of layers made by slicing a cake baked in a ring horizontally and stacking the pieces with buttercream in between.

A whole Frankfurter Kranz: a ring coated in cream and Krokant and decorated with red fruit. Photo: Hannes Grobe/AWI, 2009-07-07, location unknown. Original image / CC BY 3.0. Downscaled version from the source; no further editing.

Cutting the ring-shaped cake and layering it with cream

The cake base is not limited to a single type. Sand batter, rich in butter or other fats; Wiener batter, in which fat is added to whipped eggs; and Biskuit batter, based mainly on whipped eggs, are all used, and the 2025 edition of the German Food Code also lists these three types. Whichever batter is used, it is baked in a ring mold, cooled, and cut horizontally, and the rings of the same size are stacked.

In the method where softened butter is mixed with sugar, the eggs are added one at a time, and finally the flour and baking powder are mixed in briefly. The baked ring is left to rest in the mold for a little while before being turned out, and it is cut only after it has cooled completely. If it is still hot, the buttercream filling melts and the layers between the rings cannot hold.

One of the creams is made by adding a thick pudding, cooked from milk and vanilla-flavored powder, little by little to softened butter. The pudding here is not so much a dessert set in a dish as a starch-thickened milk cream that serves as the base of the buttercream. Bringing the two to similar temperatures helps prevent separation and lets them combine smoothly.

Filling with jam and decorating with fruit and Krokant

Adding red jam or jelly brings the tartness of fruit into the sweet layers of milk and butter. Besides spreading it thinly, another method is to pipe the cream in concentric circles and fill the spaces between them with raspberry jam. The red lines and dots that appear on the cut surface come from this way of filling. Jam is a commonly used ingredient, but it is not required in the basic composition set out in the 2025 edition of the Food Code.

The Krokant on the outside is made by heating sugar, butter, chopped almonds and the like until colored, cooling the mixture on paper, and crushing it. Nuts other than almonds are sometimes used. The cream covering the cake acts as an adhesive, holding the fine granules in place all the way to the inside of the ring. Cream is then piped on top at even intervals, and the cake is decorated with candied cherries or fresh raspberries.

After assembly, the cake is chilled to let the layers set. Because the cake and cream meld together and the cake becomes easier to slice, the practice of finishing it the day before has also been handed down. The crown interpretation, which likens the golden Krokant and red cherries to gold and jewels, is shared by Frankfurt’s tourist information and by museum educational materials.

A sliced Frankfurter Kranz. The inside of the ring and the layers of cake and cream are visible. Photo: MyName ( Claus Ableiter ), 2007-07-07, location unknown. Original image / CC BY-SA 3.0. Downscaled version from the source; no further editing.

Legends tied to the coronation city and early recipe records

According to the local origin story, in 1735 an unknown confectioner created it in honor of the coronation city. However, no coronation took place in Frankfurt that year. For this reason, the crown shape is thought to represent Frankfurt’s history as a coronation city rather than to commemorate the coronation of a particular emperor.

There is a long gap between the legend of around 1735 and the early recipes (ingredient proportions and methods) whose proportions and steps can be traced. A recipe from around 1900 is known, and one early example cited by a local confectionery shop is Karl Gruber’s “Die Conditorei in Wort und Bild,” published in 1902. The date of the legend does not make clear when the present-day combination of cake and cream began.

Buttercream labeling and the version made in Japan

For this cake, whether butter is used in the cream also affects how the product name is labeled. In 1984, a dispute over a filling cream blended with margarine went to court. The 2025 edition of the German Food Code also sets out a composition in which the ring-shaped cake is layered with buttercream and the outside is covered with Krokant. Products using cream made with vegetable fats carry labeling that makes the difference clear to buyers. While several kinds of fat may be used in the cake, the name “buttercream” for the filling depends on the fat used in the cream.

The white ring familiar in Japan is a distinctive style that Juchheim developed in Japan. Instead of caramel-colored Krokant, it is coated with almond sugar, which changes both the color of the surface and the way the granules are made. The golden and the white versions are cakes of the same name, but they differ in how the sugar-and-nut coating on the outside is finished.

Es Koyama’s Frankfurter Kranz is covered with a light Kranz sugar made by finely crushing sugar and peanuts. Coarsely chopped peanuts are also added between the layers of buttercream, creating a contrast between the fine granules on the outside and the crunch inside. Pastry chef Koyama says that he encountered this cake at Swiss Confectionery Heidi in Kobe and continues to make it at his own shop as well.

Glossary