Best cake from Pennsylvania? Prantl’s Burnt Almond Torte
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Prantl’s Bakery’s famous Burnt Almond Torte is back on the national radar getting shout-outs.
Food Network has hailed the torte as the best cake from Pennsylvania. And Martha Holmberg, CEO of the International Association of Culinary Professionals, has called the torte iconic and said that it is going to be incorporated in the group’s annual conference when it comes to Pittsburgh in March 2020.
Those accolades make its creator and the founder of Prantl’s, Henry Prantl, feel proud. “It has been the greatest thing for me,” he said.
The Upper St. Clair resident, who turns 82 later this month, was on hand Thursday for the celebration of Prantl’s grand opening of its bakery in Greensburg.
The facility in Westmoreland County is Prantl’s third location and it has been baking and shipping the almond tortes nationwide since last October and had a soft opening in February. Owner John M. Felice, who has assisted public and private companies with labor negotiations for 50 years before he bought the bakery three years ago, said full production of all Prantl’s items are made at the more than 11,000-square-foot site, which once housed Anderson’s Market. “We were running out of capacity in Shadyside,” he said.
Mr. Prantl opened the first shop in 1966 in Shadyside (a second location opened off Market Square, Downtown, in 2008). Both his father and grandfather were bakers and so baking was in his blood, but that didn’t stop him from wanting to learn more about the trade. So he would attend the bakers convention every year. He got the idea for the cake when he was at a session called Bakers Dozen at the Anaheim, Calif., convention in the early 1970s, where 13 local bakers demonstrated how to make a particular item that was sold in their shops. “I cannot remember the gentleman’s name but the owner of Caroline’s Bakery showed how to make Burnt Almond Torte,” Mr. Prantl said.
On his return to Pittsburgh, he recreated the cake, ditching the idea of a sponge cake that was used in the demo and opting instead for a yellow cake. “I was not a great fan of sponge cakes and I had a very good yellow cake recipe,” he said.
He never liked that “burnt” was part of the name, he said, “because people would think that the almonds were burned when in fact they were toasted.” So he always referred to the cake, then and now, simply as almond torte. In summer, when lemon would be added to the custard and the cake would have a little cherry on the top, it would be rechristened as lemon almond torte.
The torte didn’t get famous overnight, but it took a couple of years for it to take off, and when it did there was no going back.
A number of Pittsburgh bakeries have mimicked the Burnt Almond Torte on their menus since then, but Mr. Prantl is not sure if they make it the proper way every time, which includes making the custard with fresh eggs. “I never took shortcuts. Every time, I tried to make the cake as best as I could,” he said. “I think it’s a cake to die for if it is done properly.”
The Greensburg Prantl’s at 612 Grove St. is open 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday and 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Sunday.