French Cake : Biscuit de Savoie The Gâteau de Savoie is made with very simple ingredients, and with his gentle taste, you can enjoy Gâteau (or Biscuit) de Savoie in a plenty of manner. A cake loved throughout the world. Savoie is a French department, localized in Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region, which shares common borders with Swiss and Italy. It’s because of this cake that the technique of separating the egg yolk from the egg white was born. The Biscuit de Savoie appearance date from 1358. At this time, France was in war with the Great Britain, and was having a crisis…. Savoie region wasn’t a part of France at this time but was an independent dynasty. Therefore, receiving his sovereign Charles IV and wanting to get favours from him, Savoie suzerain Count Amédée de Savoie (Amadeus of Savoy), well aware of Charles greed, asked his pâtissier to make a cake “as light as a feather”. When the dinner draw to a close, the cake was presented to the Emperor: a huge cake representing Savoie duchy and his castle, and on the whole was sitting an imperial crown. The pâtissier who invented this cake was Pierre de Yenne. If in the old days in France it was usual to mix together the egg yolk and the egg white, Pierre tried to use the eggs to make the cake lighter. He had the idea of separating them, whip egg-whites to a light, and mix the eggs yolk with sugar till a creamy color (“blanchir” in French). Thanks to this regional cake, it’s now common to separate the yolk from the white egg. Light, fluffy, with a poor amount of fat and delicious with tea, Gâteau de Savoie is a cake that evolved with time, and acquire new tastes while respecting the traditional recipe and cake shape.