The story of the Mozart Bombe begins not in Vienna but Salzburg. In 1890, the chocolatier and confectioner Paul Fürst of Café-Konditorei Fürst invented the Mozartkugel in the city of the composer's birth. This round confection in its original form is made by forming pistachio-flavoured marzipan into small balls, coating them in a hazelnut praline cream, and then dipping and coating them in melted dark chocolate. The popularity of the original has led to numerous copycats, each made slightly differently but adhering to the basic flavour combination of pistachio, hazelnut, and chocolate. Perhaps the most ubiquitous are those made by Mirabell, who began producing Mozartkugeln on an industrial scale in the 1960s. Today a subdivision of Mondelez International, if you've ever bought Mozartkugeln either in Austria or overseas, they were probably made by Mirabell.
Here in Vienna, the Mozartkugel -- or perhaps, the popularity of the Mozartkugel and the opportunity to cash in on it -- inspired the Mozarttorte, invented by Michael Prousek in 1998. In 1982, he became the third generation of Prouseks to run Aida, handing the business over in turn to his son, Dominik, in 2015. Michael's creation consists two layers of dark chocolate cake, two of hazelnut cream, and one extremely thin middle layer of pistachio nougat, all encased in a chocolate fondant. Another is the Mozart Bombe, to be found at Café Schwarzenberg on the Ringstrasse on the northern side of Schwarzenbergplatz, a coffeehouse which has been around since 1861 and is one of the last of the so-called Ringstrassencafés. Café Schwarzenberg's Mozart Bombe has layers of chocolate cake similar to that found inside a Sachertorte sandwiched with thick lines of pistachio and hazelnut cream. The orb-shaped cake is capped with a covering of lurid green marzipan.
