Kermit the frog green cake: the Swiss Carac

The number one pastry sales in western Switzerland is the famous Kermit green tart: the Carac (also sometimes spelled Karac or even Caraque).

Even if that seems extremely obvious to me (my everyday snack in winter after a long ski day since age 2, a tradition passed on the my 4 kids), I just have come to realize that sadly the Carac does not exist in any other place in the word. And I should add apart from pistachio or macha flavored pastries or some macarons, I actually don’t know many green cakes…

To explain a little more about this enigmatic green chocolate delicious cake, I had to research it on the website of Swiss culinary heritage:

“The Carac is a chocolate tart widespread throughout western Switzerland, and also known in Swiss Germany. With its playful light green color and aspect of a flying saucer, it does not go unnoticed in the windows of pastry chefs and confectioners.

Children are not the only ones that appreciate its high content of chocolate.
Its name is very special. Nonexistent in French dictionaries, its etymology is mysterious. One could point to a phonetic link with “carrack”,  as seen in Joseph Favre (1894) Universal Dictionary of Practical kitchen, a type of “high quality cocoa, such as that occurring around Caracas”, but the question remains opened.The base is a sweet pastry bottom, a chocolate ganache and a beautiful green icing”

Caracs are green with a chocolate dot (so like a goggly eye), the diameter of the cake varies from 6cm to 3,5cm for minis and rarely you can find “specials” like these frog ones.

So yes this is 100% Swiss and seemingly the first Carac was made around 1920. So I think I should now say Kermit is a muppet “Carac green”!!

Total Carac craze out there: