Zuger Kirsch

We were recently in Boston on a very cold and blustery day. I was just starting to think that we needed a break from the cold when I noticed the L.A. Burdick chocolate store across the street, so we popped in.

I held down a table and let my husband, Eric, order us something warm and something sweet. He returned with a perfect Mexican hot chocolate and this little white rectangle called a zuger kirsch. I'd never heard of it, but being the pastry queen that I am, I tucked right in and was shocked to discover it tasted almost exactly like a Filipino dessert my mom is the master of: sans rival. I had a Ratatouille moment where I took a bite and was transported to my childhood home's kitchen table where me and my brother would take turns chopping cashews while my mom prepared the merengue layers for the sans rival that our extended family would go crazy for.

Both zuger kirsch and sans rival use merengue and are, in my opinion, the perfect balance of not-too-sweet and a little bit salty, thanks to the delicious buttercream layers. They're so similar, I tried to look into it a bit, but all I could find is (if Wikipedia is any authority) that zuger kirsch is more often known as zuger kirschtorte and was invented in Switzerland in 1921 by a chef named Heinrich Höhn. I also read that the Filipino version of it may be adapted from the French dacquoise pastry, which I've had and is very similar to my mom's sans rival, but not as close as L.A. Burdick's zuger kirsch. The potential pathway from France also makes sense given the very French name of the dessert that always baffled me as a kid, although they do speak French in Switzerland too. ::scratches head:: If there's a food historian out there who wants to unpack this one for me, I'm all ears.