Travel cakes

Where does the name come from?

Historically, these cakes were made to accompany long journeys, often by boat, train or stagecoach. The aim was to create a cake that was not fragile, that could withstand a little shaking, and that kept well, at least for several days, and didn't need to be put in the fridge.

Madame de Sévigné

A pretty legend attributes the invention of the term "travel cake" to Mme De Sévigné in the ^17th century in a letter to her daughter, but it's more a modern invention, stemming from contemporary patisserie, popularized notably by chefs like Pierre Hermé and Christophe Michalak.

Characteristics of a travel cake :

To meet all these requirements, travel cakes have certain compositional imperatives:

They contain no cream (in the sense of crème pâtissière or chantilly, for example), nor fresh fruit, which would not last the desired several days.
They often have a dense or fluffy texture that enables them to remain pleasant without drying out quickly.
They generally contain a low water content to limit the risk of mold and extend their shelf life.
They are often simple in shape, typically cake-shaped, rectangular and elongated.

Classic ingredients:

Travel cake recipes are generally quite simple, using classic ingredients:

butter, sugar, eggs, flour
Sometimes enriched with dried fruit (almonds, hazelnuts, pistachios), candied fruit or spices.
Some recipes include alcohol, such as rum or Grand Marnier, for added flavor and preservation.

Some examples of travel cakes:

All cakes: chestnut, clementine, chocolate, hazelnut and orange, ...
Roasted almond cake
Oatmeal walnut cake
Leopard cake
Gingerbread
And many more...

In a nutshell: "Gâteau de voyage" is a lovely French gastronomic term, referring to long-lasting, easy-to-carry cakes that you can take with you on a trip.

Lasts posts

The importance of sieving

In recipes that use a fine powder (flour, powdered sugar, etc.), you'll often see the advice to sift before using it. To sift is to pass the powder in question through a sieve (a very fine strainer) before incorporating it into your recipe. It's often advice, but is it really useful?
September 3^rd 20256,5433

The grease spray

As soon as you have something in a recipe that sticks to the mold, the question always arises as to how difficult it is to remove from the mold. There's nothing more frustrating than breaking your cake when unmolding it, because part of it has stuck in the mold. The classic way to avoid this is...
August 26^th 20255,9425

Cake moulds

When we make a cake, or a cake of the same rectangular shape, we usually take out our usual mould and tell ourselves that the recipe is anyway "for a cake", but is it really that simple?
August 25^th 20256,1545

Thinning out herbs

If you need to add a long-stemmed herb (tarragon, mint, verbena, thyme, etc.) to a recipe, you'll probably only need the leaves and not the stem, so you'll need to remove the leaves. Leaf removal means keeping only the beautiful leaves, and eliminating the ugly stems and leaves, but how do you do...
August 8^th 20254,3285

Add a bay leaf

Bay leaf: small in size, but big in flavor. You'll find it in hundreds of recipes, and it's often added to cooking meat, in a sauce or broth, usually accompanied by other herbs or products. It's a staple of Provençal, Mediterranean and Oriental cuisine, but not the only one. Usually, in a...
July 31^th 20254,3575

See all posts Random post RSS feeds

Other pages you may also like

The importance of sieving

In Praise of the Vegetable Mill

When a recipe or preparation calls for something solid to be pureed, as in a soup for example, the natural reflex is to take out the blender and plunge it into the saucepan. This works very well in most cases, but there are times when you'd like to puree something and at the same time remove the...
July 12^th 202311 K5

The right size of zucchini

When you buy zucchini at the market, you're often offered a wide variety of sizes, from very small to very large. But which ones to choose? Here are a few tips.
September 9^th 20249,3685

Maillard reactions

This subject cropped up recently in a discussion with my three charming nieces; do you know what Maillard reactions are? With a name like that, they could well be some principle in mechanics, but in fact the term applies to something much closer to all of us: it's what gives food more flavour...
January 28^th 201537 K4

Fruits which can ruin your jelly

There are many ways of making a fruit mousse, but one of the simplest is to prepare a fruit jelly (basically a fresh fruit coulis with gelatine) and then mix this jelly before it sets completely with whipped cream. The result is perfect for filling a charlotte, for example. But do beware;...
March 6^th 201377 K4.0