Kardinalschnitte

Kardinalschnitte is a pastry popular in Vienna, Austria, known for its beautiful white and yellow stripes. Meringue and a sponge batter rich in egg yolks are piped in alternating strips and baked, then sandwiched with jam or cream. The stripes in the cut surface come not from baking the two batters separately but from baking them side by side.

Baking two batters together

In one example, egg whites and sugar are whipped until stiff and piped in strips, and a sponge batter of egg yolks and flour is piped between them. The two batters sit side by side on the baking sheet, are dusted with powdered sugar and are baked. When the baked sheet is cut, white meringue and yellow sponge appear in alternation, and you can taste the lightness of one and the softness of the other.

A pastry chef at Heiner, a long-established Viennese confectioner, explains that the white batter is piped in two tiers, the yellow batter is added, and the surface is dusted with sugar and baked. The shop’s method is to spread apricot jam on the baked sheet, fold it over, let it cool and then cut it.

Some versions are filled with whipped cream. In a home recipe from a sugar manufacturer, three lines of meringue are piped so that they stack, two on the bottom and one on top, and sponge batter is filled into the gaps before baking. Two cooled sheets are layered with jam and fresh cream, with the top sheet placed so the stripes line up. Oberlaa in Vienna presents a version filled with coffee-flavored whipped cream. Heiner’s version, which uses only jam, and other versions generously layered with cream are the same striped pastry, yet their cross-sections differ.

A pastry named after a cardinal

The Heiner family relates that, for the 1933 Catholic Congress in Vienna, the confectioner Ludwig Heiner created a pastry named after Cardinal Theodor Innitzer. The white meringue and yellow sponge are associated with the colors of the Vatican. According to reporting by the Austrian Broadcasting Corporation, there is no record of whether the cardinal himself ate this pastry.

The name preserves the memory of a religious event in Vienna, and on pastry shop shelves the pastry is enjoyed with a variety of fillings, such as apricot, strawberry and coffee.

White and yellow also bring to mind Hanover’s Welfenspeise. That is a cold dessert of layered milk cream and wine cream. In Kardinalschnitte, two kinds of whipped batter are baked side by side to create the stripes.

Glossary