Travel Love Poland Magazine – March 2021

Sękacz
Sękacz – a multi-egg cake with 'icicles' (or branches, as
it is sometimes called a "tree-cake") - is known mainly
in the Easter tradition in the Suwałki region, but also
in many other regions of Poland. However, most of
this cake is served at the tables of almost every home
on the Polish-Lithuanian border at Easter.
Legends say that the sękacz was first mentioned in the
15th century. It was supposed to be eaten by Lithuanian
warriors, going to the Battle of Grunwald. According to
other stories, the career of Polish sękacz began in the
Suwałki region, in Berżniki, where it was baked for the
first time in honour of Queen Bona. The Queen,
delighted with the amber and golden cake, decided that
sękacz would be the decoration of the reception table
at the wedding of her son Zygmunt August. The
wedding gathered in Krakow many crowned heads and,
according to the legends, they all fell in love with the
woodland specialty. Another story says that the Poles
learned about sękacz and the method of its production
from the Yotvingian people, who lived in the northern
regions of today's Poland in the Middle Ages.
The truth is that there is no consensus on the origin of
this baking, and no wonder everyone wants to attribute
it to themselves. It seems that the cake was created in
the Polish Eastern Borderlands and from there it went
to Germany (Germans say that Sękacz comes from
Berlin), to Hungary or Romania, where the tree cake is
still baked.
You need 30 to 50 eggs to bake the cake. It is baked on a
special cylinder above the hearth. During baking, the
dough cylinder rotates and in this way characteristic
knags - icicles appear on it. The average sękacz is approx.
50-60 cm high. A lot of tree cakes is made during Easter
in the vicinity of Sejny and Puńsk, a town inhabited by
Polish Lithuanians. Many orders are received by
housewives in villages, who still make them, but Suwałki
bakeries bake the most of them. Sękacz, also known as
"dziad", "spit baba" or a "round pie", looks like a cake that
is not so easy to prepare. However, this is not the case -
both the dough and the method of baking are simple -
however, as mentioned above, they require the use of a
special oven that imitates the traditional method of
baking cakes over a fire. Anyway, you will need a lot of
patience. The whole process of baking the sękacz can
take up to three hours! For a large size sękacz you need
to use a kilogram of butter, sugar and flour, and 40 eggs
(or - according to the traditional recipe - 50 yolks).
Sometimes cream is also added. The dough can also be
enriched with additives such as ground cardamom, vanilla,
orange peel or rum. he ingredients create a fairly dense
batter, which is poured over a wooden shaft filled with a
spit, and this is placed over the fire or in a special oven.
The roller is constantly turning, thanks to which the dough
covers it evenly, and its excess flows down, creating
characteristic projections similar to knots in a tree.
Subsequent seared layers of sękacz, after cutting the
dough, look like rings in a tree trunk.
Ingredients
(version for a home-baked cake)
I250 grams of butter
a cup (220 g) of sugar
3/4 cup (150 g) of coarse ground flour
1/2 cup (110 g) of potato starch
6 eggs
5 grams of ground almonds
1 spoon of rum
1/2 vanilla pod
grease for the baking pan
How to make it
The tree cake does not contain any complicated ingredients. The most important
ingredients are eggs, wheat flour, cream, butter and sugar, which are mixed to make a
sponge and butter dough. It is worth using the addition of low-gluten flour, e.g. potato
starch - then the dough has a more delicate structure. In the past, quince juice was
added to it as well, giving it a characteristic flavour. Today, lemon is often used instead
of it, and sometimes even vanilla sugar. Cream the butter and sugar until it is light and
smooth. While constantly mixing, gradually add one yolk at a time, pour in rum, almonds,
ground vanilla and both types of flour.
Beat the stiff foam from the cooled egg whites and gently mix with the egg mass.
Grease the cake tin. Spread 2 tablespoons of dough on the bottom, bake for 5 minutes
at 200°C. When the dough is lightly browned, remove from the oven, spread another two
tablespoons of the dough on the baked dough and put the form back in the oven for
another 5 minutes. Repeat the steps until the dough is used up. (It is important to
create as many thin layers as possible). After baking, let the dough cool, remove it from
the baking pan and sprinkle generously with powdered sugar or pour over with the
frosting.
129 TRAVEL.LOVEPOLAND