How Black Forest cake went viral, and more to try at Swiss Pastry in Fort Worth
This is how important Black Forest cake is in Fort Worth:
There is a shadow market.
“We’ve seen people on Facebook offering to sell their cakes,” said Hans Muller, owner of Swiss Pastry Shop and keeper of the 66-year legacy of the city’s favorite dessert.
And not for $40 or $50.
Try $200.
If you were ordering for Christmas, it’s too late. But order other cakes and pies (see below) through Friday.
Next year, don’t miss out on trying the chocolate-almond-whipped-cream “crunchy cake” of Swiss origin and recent TikTok viral video fame.
The retail price for an 8-inch cake is $38.
Swiss Pastry Shop opened in 1973 as a bakery and sandwich deli at 3936 W. Vickery Blvd. Now, it sells so many cakes, pies, cookies, strudels and breads that the entire facility is dedicated to baking.
The bakery was already selling a Black Forest cake every 12 minutes when a Kennedale TikTok user went viral with a wistful remembrance of a childhood birthday where she had this unusual dessert she called “crunchy cake.”
Six million views and 1 million “likes” later, calls come from around the world for Swiss Pastry Shop’s Black Forest cake.
To explain: It’s a Swiss- and Swedish-style meringue version, more of a flourless crushed-almond dacquoise with fine shavings of Belgian Callebaut chocolate.
It’s not a German-style chocolate-and-cherry-liqueur Black Forest cake.
“We get a couple of calls a month from people saying they hate the cake and it’s nothing like a real Black Forest cake,” Muller said in a recent Star-Telegram Eats Beat podcast.
This cake has been served here since 1956, when Ridglea Country Club hired internationally known Swiss chef Joseph Sennhauser. He hired other Swiss and German chefs known for continental cuisine and meringue desserts.
One of those chefs was Muller’s father, the older Hans Muller, from tiny Fischbach, Switzerland, near Zell.
In summer 1973, the older Muller struck out on his own and opened Swiss Pastry Shop.
The bakery is now known for about 15 pies and 10 cakes daily, plus all sorts of smaller baked goods and quiche on weekends.
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Black Forest might not even be the best cake. The more stylish “Metropolitan” has a layer of cheesecake between layers of dense chocolate cake with chocolate ganache.
The bakery excels at pies — especially cherry, buttermilk, lemon chess and coconut cream — along with strudels, stollen, croissants and French viennoiseries.
At Thanksgiving, Swiss Pastry sells mostly pies, including pumpkin and pecan, Muller said.
But at Christmas, the top seller is far and away the Black Forest.
The younger Muller tried to broaden the menu in recent years, winning awards for hamburgers and cheesesteaks. The cafe was briefly a German food restaurant and the original home of Fort Worth pop-ups for Cane Rosso pizzas.
But the bakery business grew faster than the dining side, and when the COVID pandemic hit, Muller let baking take over the full-service restaurant space. He hopes to expand custom baking.
“People come in two years later and say, ‘What happened? I loved this restaurant,’ “ he said.
What happened is that craft bakeries are more prized than sandwich delis.
“Everything has become so Amazon-ified — I think there’s a place for local bakeries and restaurants that serve something you can’t get anywhere else,” he said.
Swiss Pastry Shop is about five blocks or a half-mile west from the Montgomery Street exits off Interstate 30 or the Chisholm Trail Parkway. .(If you see Railhead Smokehouse or Flying Fish, turn west.)
It’s open from 7 a.m. until late afternoon Tuesdays through Saturdays; 817-732-5661, facebook.com/swisspastryshop.
This story was originally published December 12, 2022 at 5:30 AM.
