Seochon bakery to beat the summer heat with green tea baum: The Baum

The Baum Gyeongbokgung Branch: a Seochon baumkuchen bakery from the outside in

The Baum Gyeongbokgung Branch is a café specializing in baumkuchen, the traditional German cake, just 134m from Gyeongbokgung Station Exit 2. The first floor is where you pick your bread, and the second floor is seating.

With the heat dragging on, wandering around at midday can honestly be risky. One of the best ways to dodge the sun is to duck into a nearby café.

At midday, it feels like there are more people inside cafés than out on the street.

All sorts of baumkuchen are on display. The shape of the bread changes depending on which direction you cut it.

Let's forget the heat for a bit while eating some sweet cake.

There's a wide variety of cakes here. At a bakery, my companion always enjoys this more than I do, honestly — thanks to that, I've been hitting a lot of cafés lately.

What is second-floor and group seating like at The Baum?

I told my companion to take their time picking bread and headed upstairs. There are group seats prepared too.

The tables are spaced generously, so it doesn't feel crowded — nice. The window seats had already been claimed by other guests.

As if they'd agreed on it, they're all enjoying their sweets in the exact same pose by the window. The person on the left looks like a blogger — busy taking photos. Somehow they look familiar, not like a total stranger.

The Baum Gyeongbokgung Branch address, hours and parking

• Address: 13-2 Jahamun-ro, 1st & 2nd floor, Jongno-gu, Seoul, South Korea
• Location: 134m from Gyeongbokgung Station Exit 2 (use Kakao Map or Naver Map for directions)
• Hours: Daily 10:00–22:00
• Parking: Not available
• Seating: Table seating, group seats for up to 12
• Amenities & services: Vegan menu, reservations, takeout, Wi-Fi, separate restrooms, group seating available

The Baum menu and baumkuchen prices

• Plain soft baum ₩22,000
• Plain hard baum ₩18,000
• Mini baum plain ₩4,500
• Custard baum ₩4,500
• Mini watermelon baumkuchen ₩7,900
• Watermelon baumkuchen ₩29,900
• Horiang ₩19,800
• Torte chocolat baum ₩22,000
• Chocolat hard baum ₩18,000

Baumkuchen (나무 케이크, 'tree cake') is a cake that originated in Germany. Its name comes from the way the cross-section resembles the rings of a tree trunk when sliced. The shape of the bread changes depending on which direction you cut it.

Apparently, the cake is made by layering batter over and over on a rotating spit, repeating the process anywhere from ten to twenty times to build up the layers. For special occasions they even make enormous cakes weighing up to 45kg.

How do the mini melon baum, green tea baum and brûlée matcha baum taste?

What I picked at The Baum Gyeongbokgung Branch was mini baum layered melon (₩4,500), green tea baum (₩4,000), brûlée matcha baum (₩7,800), and two iced Americanos (₩5,000). Three types of baumkuchen in total.

Two iced Americanos and three types of baum.

This one looks like the green tea baum.

By the look of it, this must be the brûlée matcha custard baum. A brûlée is made by placing sugar on top of custard cream and melting it with a torch to form a hard shell. Since it's melted, hardened sugar, the sweetness is an absolute explosion.

The green tea baum isn't very sweet at all.

I wasn't sure how to eat it, but since they gave us a knife, I figured we should just slice it up.

Cut it in half and there's cream inside.

Since it's made with matcha, it feels like it won't put on weight. When eating something sweet, it's fine to forget about your diet for a moment.

The green tea baum isn't sweet either — with all that green tea in it, it feels like a healthy bread.

Not sure why this one was wrapped separately.

You can see the layered rings, right? Making just one of these must take a huge amount of care. Since the cake is soft, I think they wrapped it separately so the shape wouldn't get crushed.

Taking a bite, I could taste the melon. It's the kind of visual that really shows off what baumkuchen is about — the shape looks upscale enough to make a good gift too.

Final verdict on The Baum, a baumkuchen specialist near Gyeongbokgung Station

Thanks to my companion these days, I've been going to cafés a lot more often. When it's this hot, there really is nothing as comfortable as a café. I'm getting more and more used to the pleasure of eating sweet bread or cake under cool air conditioning. If you're curious about baumkuchen, give The Baum near Gyeongbokgung Station a visit.

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