The legendary Prague chocolate cake, like many culinary masterpieces, has its own story. The author of "Prague" is the famous Moscow confectioner Vladimir Mikhailovich Guralnik. This cake, created more than 40 years ago, is very popular today.
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Cake "Prague" and its creator
Cake "Prague" has nothing to do with the capital of the Czech Republic. Its history is closely connected with the confectionery shop of the Moscow restaurant "Prague", which was opened in honor of the decade of the liberation of Prague from the Nazi invaders.
In 1955, sixteen-year-old Vladimir Guralnik got a job in the confectionery shop of the restaurant. Having traveled a long way from an assistant to a master pastry chef, in 1969 he headed the workshop.
The menu of the Prague restaurant consisted of dishes of Czech national cuisine, so often chefs and pastry chefs from Czechoslovakia came to the capital of the USSR to exchange experiences. It is believed that they brought to Moscow the original recipe for the Prague cake, which included 4 types of cream, liqueurs Benedictine and Chartreuse were used, and the cakes were soaked exclusively with rum. Subsequently, the confectioners of the restaurant significantly changed this recipe - this is how the chocolate dessert loved by many appeared. However, this version of the creation of famous pastries is not supported by facts. In Czech cuisine, on the contrary, the Prague recipe is missing.
The authorship of the dessert that became the culinary symbol of the USSR belongs to the head of the confectionery shop at the Prague restaurant - Vladimir Mikhailovich Guralnik. He came up with more than 30 original baking recipes, including the equally well-known cakes "Bird's milk", "Zdenka", "Wenceslas".
Another myth about the creation of the cake "Prague" - it is a paraphrase of the famous Viennese cake "Sacher". Purely visually, these desserts are similar, but there is nothing in common between them to taste. One of the advantages of Prague is the original butter cream, and Sacher is a dry cake and is prepared without cream.
Many housewives tried to bake “Prague” at home, selecting and varying the ingredients. Now the recipe for this cake is published, corresponding to GOST, and it is possible to cook the famous cake according to all the rules.