Kiev cake


A Kiev cake or Kyiv cake is a brand of dessert cake, made in Kiev, Ukraine, since December 6, 1956 by the Karl Marx Confectionery Factory. It soon became popular all over the Soviet Union.
The cake has become one of the symbols of Kiev city, particularly by its brand name and package, depicting the horse chestnut leaf.
The cake has two airy layers of meringue with hazelnuts, chocolate glaze, and a buttercream-like filling.

History

Once confectioners forgot to put some amount of egg-white for the biscuit in a cooler. The next morning the chef Kostyantyn Petrenko, with the help of 17-year-old assistant Nadia Chornohor, in order to hide the mistake of his colleagues, spread frozen cakes with buttercream, strewed with powder, decorated with floral ornaments.
The recipe of the Kiev cake has changed with time: in the 1970s, bakers perfected the process of making egg-white and nut mixture, then started to add hazelnut in cake and began experimenting with peanuts and cashews. However, these expensive nuts increased the cake's cost so the factory returned to using hazelnuts.