Chef Shorty's Black Forest Cake
For over thirty years, Chef Shorty Lenard's nontraditional dessert reigned in North Louisiana
“The perfect way to end a perfect dinner in Shreveport is with Black Forest Cake, of course,” reads a line from the July 10, 1981 edition of the Shreveport Journal’s dining column, “Eating Out”. Though today it has all but vanished from local menus, from the 1960s until the 1990s, Chef Shorty Lenard’s dessert was a ubiquitous presence at Shreveport’s upscale restaurants, members-only clubs, event venues, and social gatherings.
It all began in 1962, when Chef Alma Clifton “Shorty” Lenard debuted his version of Black Forest Cake at the Shreveport Club.
Born in Arcadia in 1921, Shorty’s culinary history begins at his father’s café in nearby Simsboro. He honed his craft in Europe while serving in the U.S. Army’s Fourth Infantry Division from 1940 until 1945. By 1947, he’d made his way home to North Louisiana and begun a career as a professional chef. And by 1962, he was a trusted and esteemed member of the Shreveport culinary scene.
Aside from its name, Shorty’s Black Forest Cake shared few characteristics with the classic Black Forest Gâteau. Shorty’s version replaced the gâteau’s simple sponge cake layers with fragile discs of baked meringue, and daringly nixed the German delicacy’s Maraschino cherries.
The resulting dessert is a wonder of contrasting textures. Luxurious layers of whipped cream and velvety German chocolate are punctuated by the satisfying crunch of crisp meringue laced with finely chopped almonds and hazelnuts.
Keith Lenard, Shorty’s son and a retired chef himself, does not mince words about his late father’s best-known menu item. “It’s not a Black Forest Cake at all,” he said. “It’s a torte. It’s an almond egg white meringue torte with German chocolate and whipped cream layers. It may seem simple, but I promise you it’s not.”
In fact, Shorty’s cake actually resembles the Swiss version of Black Forest Cake, called Schwarzwaldtårta, as opposed to the more commonly-recognized German one. It’s possible, then, that he may have learned to make the cake from Chef Joe Amstutz, a Swiss Chef who worked at the Shreveport Club from 1947 until 1958. Shorty told reporters that he had concocted the recipe while attempting to recreate a European dessert from memory. Some former employees have even claimed they heard the chef say he had gotten the recipe from an issue of Southern Living.
[Read this: The Louisiana origins of Maurice French Pastries' favorite dessert, kugelhopf]
However it originated, word of Shorty Lenard’s Black Forest Cake spread like wildfire, the dish hopping from one kitchen to another as often as the temperamental chef changed jobs. Because Shorty spent twenty years cooking for restaurants and clubs that doubled as event venues, the cake came to be associated with weddings and special occasions. In this way, Shorty’s Black Forest Cake became an emotional touchstone for Shreveporters, many of whom still associate the cake with the happiest nights of their lives.
Shorty opened his own restaurant, Shorty Lenard’s, in 1976. The fifteen-table café, which occupied a former fast food drive-thru, quickly gathered a following with its upscale French and Italian cuisine. Shorty relocated the restaurant to a more suitable address in 1981, a mansion-turned-restaurant where a sign at the entrance welcomed diners to the “Home of the Black Forest Cake.”
When Shorty Lenard’s closed in 1988, the seventy-one year-old chef was still at it. He cooked at hotels and riverboat casinos in downtown Shreveport, including the Chateau Suite Hotel, which ran a weekly ad promoting “Chef Shorty Lenard’s Sunday Buffet featuring Prime Rib and Black Forest Cake.” There was even a Black Forest Cake booth at the Red River Revel, Shreveport’s largest annual outdoor festival.
“I bet I’ve sold $100,000 or more worth of that cake,” Shorty told The Times in 1987. “What one recipe can do for you is wonderful.”
The three-decade reign of Shorty Lenard’s Black Forest Cake came to a close in the years preceding Shorty’s death in 2003. As suddenly as it emerged, the wildly popular dessert all but disappeared from local restaurants and bakeries.
"When you’ve got a whipped cream exterior, and you introduce it to this Louisiana heat...a lot can go wrong.” —Chef Black Jackson
“It ended in the mid-to-late 1990s, when my father went to work for the riverboat casinos,” Keith Lenard said. “Without his own personal kitchen to work out of, it was impossible for him to keep doing it.”
Today, there are several home-based bakers who market the cake, mostly around the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays, using Facebook and Instagram to reach customers who long for a taste of Shreveport past.
Chef Blake Jackson, owner of Shreveport’s Whisk Dessert Bar, said that his bakery regularly receives calls requesting Shorty Lenard-style Black Forest Cake. “There’s a lot of nostalgia for this cake, and there’s definitely a market for it,” Jackson said. “It’s a tradition that should be continued.”
Part of the dish’s enduring mystique is the fact that it is notoriously challenging to make. The fragile meringue discs, Jackson said, require three hours to bake and must then be left in a sealed oven to dry overnight. Otherwise, the humid Louisiana air will intrude. (“You don’t want a wet meringue,” Jackson cautioned.) In Shorty’s kitchens, according to former employees, the chef stacked meringue discs beneath the vent hood, running the vent in order to pull moisture away from them.
Once the fragile discs are successfully baked and dried, they are layered with fresh whipped cream and a German chocolate-based filling before the entire assemblage is covered with even more whipped cream. Finally, chocolate shavings are added to the cake’s top and sides.
Even serving the cake is difficult. “I’ve cut this cake a lot of different ways, and it just does not cut nicely. It crumbles,” Jackson said. “Also, there’s the simple fact that it’s covered in fresh whipped cream. When you’ve got a whipped cream exterior, and you introduce it to this Louisiana heat...a lot can go wrong.”
Happily, the recipe and instructions for Shorty Lenard-style Black Forest Cake were published in two popular Shreveport cookbooks produced by the Junior League of Shreveport-Bossier, A Cook’s Tour of Shreveport and Revel. More than a quarter-million copies of A Cook’s Tour of Shreveport were sold over the course of twelve printings between 1964 and 2011, making it one of the easiest Shreveport cookbooks to track down. This means that virtually anyone who is up to the challenge can try their hand at recreating Chef Shorty’s Black Forest Cake.
Keith Lenard hopes that a new generation will learn about, cook, and enjoy his late father’s beloved creation. “It keeps my dad’s memory alive, and I think it’s an important part of the Shreveport story,” Keith Lenard said. “I just hope the cake stays alive.”
By the writer’s estimation, it’s likely been over thirty years since someone could walk into a bakery in Shreveport and buy a slice of Shorty Lenard-style Black Forest Cake. After whipping one up for our photo shoot, Chef Blake Jackson has decided to start serving the mythical dessert by the slice at Whisk Dessert Bar. Inquiries for purchase of whole cakes can be made through whiskshreveport@gmail.com or (318) 459-8771. whiskdessertbar.com.