Austrian and Hungarian Tortes and Pastries

[ludja]

People have mentioned a few of their favorites in this thread

Sound of Music Party

but this topic deserves its own thread.

What are some of your favorite or most unusual Austrian and/or Hungarian desserts?

Please give a description of the dessert as well.

One of my all-time favorites:

The famous Dobos Torte

description from Rick Rodger's, Kaffehaus,

"Five thin layers (no more, no less) of vanilla sponge cake, each slathered with rich chocolate buttercream icing, and topped with wedges of caramelized cake"

The caramel topping is a crisp layer on top of a thin piece of cake and has a wonderful, slightly bitter taste that sets off the chocolate perfectly.

Edited January 22, 2004 by ludja (log)

[Pan]

ludja, I spent two weeks in Budapest in September of 1994, and it's one of the places I've loved most. I loved the beauty of the location, the architecture, the great musicians, and the people (frankly, I thought it had the highest percentage of gorgeous women per capita of any place I’ve ever been, and the men were good-looking too, though I paid less attention to them), loved walking around the city, and loved the pastries! (The savory food was good, too.)

For breakfast, I went to a bakery that specialized in Retes (strudels) and got Megyes Retes (sour cherry strudels - my favorite) or Makos Retes (poppy strudels - my 2nd favorite).

After lunch, I liked to go to a local bakery on the street that led into the Chain-Link Bridge to get Gestenygolju (Chestnut balls, with a chocolate exterior and not only chestnut paste but also sour cherries inside).

Every night, I had Somlói galuska in the outdoor cafe of the same bakery. It was served in a tall, wide glass, and was something like a fantastic ice cream sundae atop a great cake. There was chocolate and plenty of tejszinhabb (whipped cream, or in the language of the neighboring Austrians, Schlag). You can see a recipe here:

Hungarian recipes

Other Hungarian desserts I love include Gestenypure (Chestnut puree), which is served with more tejszinhabb, and Gundel Palacsinta, a nut and chocolate crepe flambéed in what I thought was brandy (I Googled and found descriptions of it flambéed in cognac and rum, but brandy seems more Hungarian). I got one or the other as a dessert after dinner at a classy restaurant on Realtanoda Utca, across the street from the flat where I was renting a room, when I was feeling luxuriant and wasn’t stuffed already from dinner.

[Jon Tseng]

Tangentially related - had Gundel Pancake a couple of times in Hungary last summer; nice but a bit too heavy for my tastes... nuts... chocolate... cream etc.

cheerio

J

PS but the cold fruit/cherry soups they have as starters are the BEST thing on a baking summer lunchtime!!!

Edited January 22, 2004 by Jon Tseng (log)

[ludja]

ludja, I spent two weeks in Budapest in September of 1994, and it's one of the places I've loved most...

Pan: What a lovely treat to wake up today and read your wonderful description of Budapest sweets and your time there. You manage to capture some of the romantic, baroque atmosphere of it all; which is a lovely accompaniement to eating desserts in that part of the world. Thank you!

I have been to Hungary a little bit but mainly in Southeastern Austria (Graz) where my grandparents live. I would really like to go to Budapest also. There is much overlap between Austrian and Hungarian cooking in that area; goulashes, paprika chicken, etc.

The sour cherry strudel sounds excellent. The flavors I am used to are: apple and topfen (farmer's cheese) for sweet; potato and cabbage for savory...

There are poppy seed and walnut strudels in Austria also, but to my experience, they are composed of a yeast dough; a completely different animal than the phyllo-type but also excellent.

The Gestenygolju (Chestnut balls, with a chocolate exterior and not only chestnut paste but also sour cherries inside) also sound incredible. I've never heard of them. I love chestnut desserts, including, 'Kastanien Reis" or Gestenypure or "Mont Blanc". I've had other good chestnut tortes in which a nice yellow cake is split in two and filled with a thick band of chestnut puree/whipped cream and served with more schlag... of course.

I never heard of "Somlói galuska ". Everyone who reads this owes it to themselves to read the recipe in the link. Sounds like a fantastical dessert. That nut filling, composed of ground walnuts, rum, milk, raisins is very good and similar to that used in walnut strudel and walnut crescent cookies...

I do like the Gundel Palatschinken---but it's true for me as Jon Tseng mentions that it can sometimes be difficult to have after a big meal due to its richness. Our family usually had Palatschinken as a meatless meal; filled with currant jelly and or sweetened farmers cheese....

Thanks again Pan, this was wonderful!

[bloviatrix]

When I think of Budapest and desserts, my mind automatically goes to the apple strudel. I can't remember the name of the cafe but the room had a belle epoque feel. I remember the warm apple strudel with a dollop of cold vanilla bean flecked ice cream. I sat there and was transported to another time.

[Pan]

bloviatrix, one of the things that's wonderful about Budapest is that there are a whole bunch of cafes that fit your description!

Glad you enjoyed my post, ludja, and do visit Budapest some time.

[zaelic]

Living in Budapest one tends to take great pastries for granted. My favorite is the Sutemény Bolt (Cookie Store) at Oktagon Square. Can't argue with chocolate kuglof the size of a football for 75 US cents. The best cakes are at Perity (pronounced Perich) next to the Kossuth Mozi (movie) near Nyugati Train station. This is the same Perity that used to have a stand up pastry shop on Andrassy ut near the famed Muvész Kavezó - they supplied the Muvész' pastries, and still do from their kitchen. If you are a tourist, don't miss the Muvész, but the real coffee house culture is across the street at the Eckerman Kavezó, in the German Cultural Institute - no pastries to speak of, but all the art, film, and music scene drifts in for coffee, newspapers, art journal reading and networking in the late afternoon, just the way coffee culture in Hungary is supposed to work.

Being of the Hebrew persuasion, I love to hang out at Frohlichs bakey on Dob utca in the 7th district Jewish ghetto. It's the last kosher bakery in a town that once had dozens of them. They serve great coffee with local specialties such as "flodni" - an apple-nut-poppyseed crumb cake traditional to Hungarian Jews.

As far as strudels go, I am really spoiled. We get them fresh at the metro or bus stations for about 60 cents. Cherry, apple, cheese, or sweet cabbage. You either cram them in your face on the bus or take them home. Nobody really makes a big deal about rétes (strudel).

All these delicacies come with a price - I paid it and now I have had to go on Atkins. But no problem: check out the spanking new "Csoda Suti" bakery on Dob utca in the ghetto! Sugar free, diabetic friendly and low carb pasties, with one small table so you can chow down right there. Everything has carbs and calories posted for all to see. And they actually taste good!

Edited March 4, 2004 by zaelic (log)

[ludja]

Welcome zaelic and thanks for your nice first post on pastries in Budapest! I hope you post on other Hungarian dishes as well.

Just to add to this thread:

One of my other favorite Austro/Hungarian tortes is a Malakoff Torte (vanilla spongecake layers moistenend with rum and filled with an almond buttercream and frosted with whipped cream).

[chromedome]

"Five thin layers (no more, no less) of vanilla sponge cake, each slathered with rich chocolate buttercream icing, and topped with wedges of caramelized cake"

My Hungarian co-worker blows a gasket at the mention of a Dobos with anything other than seven layers.

Is this one of those things like making polenta for an Italian? They all do it differently, and only the way they do it at home is the correct way?

[zaelic]

Dobos torta with less than seven layers would be like alcohol free beer. But most people do not make their own cakes - there is a pastry shop on the corner and you buy them there. While consumer items in Hungary are no longer "cheap" cakes still are. Usually, if I am going to visit my aunt I will stop near her bus stop and buy about five different slices - usually a Black Forest cake, an Eszterthazy (nut and creme), a slice of dobos, and a couple of Krémes (this is what Homer Simpson would dream about if he were Magyar) My aunt managed a restaurant for fifteen years so she would complain that the dobos just isn't what it used to be...

On a lighter note, palacsinta stands and tiny streetside strudel shops are making quite a comback, after having dissappeared during the mid 1990s.

[Boris_A]

I like Powidltaschkerl a lot. (Kind of potatao dough raviolis filled with a prune reduction. Served hot). Originally from Boehmia, I think. Let's say "K&K".

My preferred Austrian cake is "Mohn-Gugelhopf" of Demel's Zuckerbäckerei. Very thin layers of dough (what dough? I still don't know) and very thin layers of grated Mohn rolled over and then pressed in a Gugelhopf mould. Very elegant. Once, I bougth a whole for my birthday party and paid $70 for it. I did not regret.

Hello zaelic.

My father is Bulgarian and he attained 1954 the cup final in Wankdorf stadion in Bern. I think he is still sad.

[zaelic]

Zdravo Boris!

Speaking of Bulgaria, anybody ever get a hankering for those good old communist-era style Balkan sweets? Spongecakes and cremes drenched in fake rum aroma sugar syrup as if they were baklava? I go to Romania and Bulgaria quite a lot and I do overindulge. The Central Teras in Cluj is a good example. About twenty cakes, all variations on the "soak it in rum syrup" theme.

In Varna and Balchik last summer during the heat wave there were days I existed on nothing else but cakes, coffee and beer. And maybe a bit of raki. And banitsa for breakfast. Banitsa is the Bulgarian cheese pastry - like a Turkish borek, but more filling and dryer. Not sweet, it is great straight from the bakery. Once it cools it tastes like a brown paper bag, but fresh they are great!

[ludja]

Dobos torta with less than seven layers would be like alcohol free beer.

Very good point; thanks for the correction--to describe the cake in the first post I just quoted from Rodger's Kaffehaus--in which the recipe has six layers (one for the caramel). I've been happy to have this book to fill in from the much older cookbooks that I have, but 'authenticity' is still a question.

Jogging my memory in eating them in Austria-six is definately way too few layers. My older cookbook (O. and A. Hess, Viennese Cooking) says 8-12 layers! It is nice to be able to buy pastries over there--when in Austria my Grandmother always buys pastry rather than make it (except for strudel/retes which she can whip out blindfolded and with one hand behind her back!). When my mom immigrated to the US, the only way we could still have those pastries was to make them at home.

On a lighter note, palacsinta stands and tiny streetside strudel shops are making quite a comback, after having dissappeared during the mid 1990s.

This is pretty cool. I've never seen anything like that in Graz where my relatives live. One baked good they do make 'on the street' are krapfen. (lenten yeast doughnuts).

I grew up eating palatschinken and kaiserschmarren (?broken up sweet omelet soufflee? ) for dinners when my father was traveling for work and it was just mom and us kids or else on a meatless Friday. Mom has a sweet tooth and we loved it too.

I like Powidltaschkerl a lot. (Kind of potatao dough raviolis filled with a prune reduction. Served hot). Originally from Boehmia, I think. Let's say "K&K".

My grandma always make zwetschenknodel (potato dumplings filled with a plum, rolled in fried bread crumbs and sugar)---I know I would like the powidltascherl also. She also makes marillenknodel (more of a cream puff type dough filled with an apricot, rolled in fried bread crumbs and sugar).

I've had 'regular' Mohn-Gugelhupf. i.e. where the poppyseeds are distributed all through the traditional gugelhupf yeast dough but this sounds like an extremely elegant version. I guess one would expect no less from Demel's...

Thanks both for sharing your memories and expertise at the source; it's a topic I am very interested in but it is a difficult one to pursue in the U.S. (Give thanks to e-gullet!)

[zaelic]

Actually, Hungarian szilva gomboc (plum dumplings) sound like the plum confections you are mentioning.

Very easy to make. Sounds like a lot of work but if you have old mashed potatos and plums lying around you can have it on the table in half an hour.

Take cold mashed potatos. Add some flour and an egg or two to make a stiff dough. Chill. Now pit some small plums. Replace pit with a sugar cube and some cinnamon. Now Take some potato dough and cover the plum so you have a dumpling ball the size of an... i don't know... maybe the size of an apricot.

Drop the potato dough/plum balls in salted boiling water, simmer for five to ten minutes. Remove from water. The longer you boil them the softer the plum gets.

Have on hand fine breadcrumbs sauted to brown in a lot of butter. Roll the boiled dumplings in the hot buttery crumbs, the shake on sugar. Eat. And eat. And eat.

[ludja]

Actually, Hungarian szilva gomboc (plum dumplings) sound like the plum confections you are mentioning.

Yes, there is lots of overlap between the foods of Austria and Hungary and all the other countries of the old empire-especially in Burgenland and Styria. Most of the names I know are the Austrian ones...

Thanks for posting the recipe! I guess the only other thing to mention is to make sure one uses "floury or mealy" potatoes for the mashed potatoes, i.e. russets (in the US) rather than waxy ones. And, as far I know--just potatoes that are mashed--i.e. no cream, butter, salt and pepper....

(Or as my Oma would say, 'mehlig erdapfel'.)

Also to mention, these are often eaten as a meal, with perhaps just a soup to start off with. yum, yum. (I guess these types of meals would send shivers though an Atkins enthusiast. )

Edited March 5, 2004 by ludja (log)

[Boris_A]

Banitsa is the Bulgarian cheese pastry - like a Turkish borek, but more filling and dryer. Not sweet, it is great straight from the bakery. Once it cools it tastes like a brown paper bag, but fresh they are great!

I make a lot Banitsa. Can't forget since I visited Bulgaria in tender age of 6.

The combination of egg, dough, and the slightlly sour cheese is just overwhelming.

It's the easiest trick I know to get food attention at a party. Neophytes always come back and ask for the recipe.

However, I make it with "millefeuille" (puff pastry?). Originally, it's with phylo I think.

Banitsa with puff pastry is very easy to make. Eggs, pastry, milk, yoghurt, acceptable Feta - that's about all you need for a western-style Banitsa. And 15 minutes of work.

And in this variant, it can be pretty good when rewarmed. I never experienced any problem to get rid of it.

Now Baklava ist the other hot Bulgarian thing. Incredibly sweet and tasty. Nuts, butter, dough, maybe rosewater, sugar syrup. Orgiastic. I remember as well.

[ludja]

The combination of egg, dough, and the slightlly sour cheese is just overwhelming.

It's the easiest trick I know to get food attention at a party. Neophytes always come back and ask for the recipe.

However, I make it with "millefeuille" (puff pastry?). Originally, it's with phylo I think.

Banitsa with puff pastry is very easy to make. Eggs, pastry, milk, yoghurt, acceptable Feta - that's about all you need for a western-style Banitsa. And 15 minutes of work.

And in this variant, it can be pretty good when rewarmed. I never experienced any problem to get rid of it.

Sounds delicious. Kind of like a savory strudel?

(Sweet 'topfen' strudel made with farmer's cheese is one of my favorites).

Is your recipe a little like this?

banitsa recipe

Do you agree with the cheese substitues or do you just use feta?

Thank you...

[Boris_A]

ludja,

Yes, very similar.

Here's my Stripped-Down-Like-a-Racing-Car-Banitsa:

I use a 30x20 rectangle mould (alu or thin stainless for immediate heat transport).

- two foils of thin (puff) pastry, one a bit larger

- 4 eggs

- 200g not too finely crumbled feta (acidity is important. At my supermarket, the cheapest is clearly the best!)

- 1 cup of yoghurt (preferred greek with extra fat 5-10%)

- 1,5 dl milk.

- soda (a tip of a knife)

Now:

- mix 3 eggs, crumbled feta, yoghurt, soda.

- place larger layer of pastry foil a the bottom of the mould, covering side walls too

- fill with egg/feta mix

- cover with upper foil

- with a wooden spatula, I diagonally and crosswise cut lines (by stamping down to the bottom) forming large parallelograms

- mix milk and 1 egg and pour over (to add liquidity)

- 30-40 minutes at 180-200 degrees. Golden color, brown edges.

Preparation time around 15 minutes, but I think once I came in with 12 min 27 sec.

Adding some cut spinach leafs to the egg/feta is a great variant. I imagine my recipe has done to real banitsa what back in the sixties an American TV-cook could have done to Lasagne.

I serve it hot out the oven, cold as aperitif (kind of quiche), rewarmed for dinner or the next day. I must have made north of 300 banitsas over the years, and I never had to throw away a crumb. I swear!

edited for typos

Edited March 6, 2004 by Boris_A (log)

[zaelic]

Boris, I should mention that last summer I discovered a fantastic restaurant in the old city/downtown part of Varna - the name escapes me but my girlfriend wrote it down (in Japanese, as she is wont to do, so I can't read it until she gets back from Tokyo.) Just ask for the "folkoric" restaurant near the main square of the old city. One of Europe's best eateries, you can stuff yourself on well prepared regional food in a beautifully restored old style Bulgarian "Han" for ten bucks with good Thracian wine and raki included. We actually stayed three extra days in Varna just so we could keep eating there.

Now, to be honest, one doesn't travel to Bulgaria for gourmandizing. Restaurant food tends to be much the same everywhere - roast meat, bad rice, cucumber and tomato sald, and truly horrible bread rolls. Kebabche meat (ground pork flavored with cumin) is formed into every concievable patty - sausage shaped, cutlet shaped, ball shaped - and gets a bit tiring after a week or two. It also often goes bad - a bout of food poisoning sent me to the emergency ward of Sofia Hospital a couple of years ago... not a pretty sight.

I usually travel to Bulgaria each summer, after a couple of weeks in Maramures and Bukovina in northern Romania, where I go to learn Romanian style fiddle music - I'm a working musician. Once I get sick of hanging around playing with the amazing village fiddlers and eating only corn meal mamaliga and potatoes and getting fleas for weeks I catch the 6 am train from Suceava, change at Bucharest, switch trains again at Ruse, and I am in Varna at 8 pm (all those trains end up costing about $20). We get a private room for six Euros, and have a nice 3 Euro fish dinner at one of the many restaurants on the Black Sea beaches ten minutes from downtown. Afterwards it's baklava, turkish style coffee and raki at the cafes. Varna - of all the Black Sea towns and resorts - is the greatest undiscovered and amazingly inexpensive beach vacation in Europe. I'll be back there in August.

Edited March 6, 2004 by zaelic (log)

[Boris_A]

Now, to be honest, one doesn't travel to Bulgaria for gourmandizing.

Which is a part of sad story.

I must think of delicate Bulgarian "Feta" once easily available in Switzerland. Now vanished in western Europe. I find it only in Vienna nowadays. Same sad story with Ostiepcki cheese from Slovakia. Unavailable even in Vienna!

I think of yoghurt, an almost Bulgarian invention.

I think of kind of sauerkraut my grandfather had in open barrel in his dark cellar. I was shocked by the idea of eating out of this barrel, but after the first bite, little Boris wanted more...

We already mentioned banitsa and baklava. Shopska salata with Bulgarian vegetables .. .agneschka suppa ... tarator ...mussaka ... mish mash. My Swiss Italian mother had no problem to learn those recipes.

zaelic,

your descriptions just allude to an ever returning wish to travel there again. To hear the unique Bulgarian women chores. Back then, in a little chapel near Bojana, Sofia, there was a hidden chore behind the altar, it was like a sung duel between some high women voices and a male bass. Unforgetable. The incredibly beautitful monasteries. This so typical Slawish mix of sadness an joy at the same time.

where I go to learn Romanian style fiddle music - I'm a working musician. Once I get sick of hanging around playing with the amazing village fiddlers

Something similar to Taraf Hajduk?

Foodies, sorry!

OTOH, it's not terribly overcrowded here ...

Edited March 6, 2004 by Boris_A (log)

[zaelic]

Shouldn't have to apologize to foodies. If you don't travel you don't taste the local food. Music and food hit me on the same level - they leave an impression on my mind of a place and it's flavors. I play a lot of differnt styles of music - Taraf style, Transylvanian village style, Klezmer - and each of these is imprinted with a gustatory sensation as well. Eating hot big-holed Moldavian bagels with an old Jewish fiddler. Discussing what my illiterate and obese Transylvanian Gypsy band friends could possibly find to eat while on tour in Japan (nikuchaga and katsu.) Chowing on lamb with Muslim gypsy bagpipers in Yambol. Best meal this last summer was in Ayder Yayla, eastern Black sea coast in Turkey. A whole village of itinerant Hemshin (Muslim Armenian) pastry bakers. I was pursuing bagpipers and one invited me to join the family meal: boiled garlicky goat followed by fried trout, followed by baklava with Kackar mountain "crazy" honey, and then do the whole meal over and over again.

that said: Mamaliga (or coarse polenta) poured into a baking pan and covered with plum jam, castor sugar, and crushed walnuts... cool and slice. Bye bye Atkins diet...

Edited March 6, 2004 by zaelic (log)

[ludja]

- soda (a tip of a knife)

Thank you very much for the recipe Boris_A; it sounds very good; I love feta and this sounds like a great way to use it.

Interesting to add baking soda (I assume) to this mix.

[Boris_A]

baking soda (I assume)

Correct. Be careful, just a tiny little bit to make the filling less compact.

[Inbicooks]

All these descriptions make me want to catch the next plane to Budapest.

I have a question, I don't know if it's about pastry or bread, I guess it falls somewhere in between. Last time I was in Budapest I was introduced to this bread, but it was more like a cake, the texture and flavour was similar to challa bread, only the central part was chocolaty. Does anyone know what I'm talking about and maybe have a recipe? My friend is coming to visit me from Budapest and he's crazy about the stuff, I would like to surprise him with it.

[Mistinguett]

Did it look anything like this?