Today I am presenting the German answer to American pies: strudel! Strudel is a very elastic dough, which is rolled up to a log and contains lots and lots of fruit filling. When I served this plum strudel with cinnamon streusel to my guests, I could barely manage to see any of it as it was gone so quickly. Just as pies, this strudel is a “healthier” version of a cake as the ratio of unsweetend dough to lots of fruit filling simply is genious. If you are into fruity cakes and like pies, you will definitely also enjoy strudel, give this beauty a try.
So as stated, strudel is traditionally filled with fruits, normally with apples, but I decided to go for plums. If you rather have a tart, you may also enjoy this plum tart with cinnamon streusel. I can also recommend these sweet yeast dumplings with plums. We are going to make the dough from scratch, but don’t be intimidated, the most important aspect is to need it for at least ten minutes for the gluten to develop. But other than that it is really not hard to prepare. Especially if you have a kneading machine to help you, like a KitchenAid. Ursula from the blog Little Vienna gives tons and tons of tips for perfect strudel dough. I have tried her recipe several times now and each time it was a huge hit. The secret is to really stretch the dough paper thin, if you don’t, it will get rock hard. Stretch it as much as you can and be sure to brush it with butter, one time before baking and several times duing baking. This will result in a super flaky crust that serves as the right carrier for all this delicious fruit filling. Usually you add bread crumbs to the filling, but I decided to instead make streusel. Cinnamon streusel to be exact, because if these taste nice as a topping, they will for sure also taste great inside the strudel. Seriously, this is a dream come true!
Credit: Strudel dough from Little Vienna
This plum strudel with cinnamon streusel is easier than it looks, the homemade strudel dough is filled with plums and cinnamon streusel and brushed with butter during baking. Place all the ingredients for the dough in a large bowl and either knead by hand or with the hook attachment for about ten minutes, the dough should be fairly sticky and shiny and needs this amount of time for the gluten to develop its powers. If kneading by hand, slap on the table in between kneading. Wash another bowl with warm water, dry thoroughly and put about a teaspoon of oil in it. Place the dough inside, cover and let rest for at least half an hour. Meanwhile for the filling cut the plums in half and take out the stone. Create crumbs with the flour, almonds, sugar, butter, and cinnamon and chill until ready. Preheat oven to 180 degrees Celsius and line one baking sheet with parchment paper. Now take out the dough, place on a large tea towel, which you should flour. Also flour your rolling pin and your hands. Roll out the dough into a rectangle. Then take off all rings of your fingers and stretch the dough, you should be able to see the tea towel below. The dough should have the size of the tea towel, roughly of 40x70cm. Trimm off edges if they are still too thick. Place the prepared plums and streusel on the dough, leaving an edge of at least 2 cm all around, I also like to only fill about 3/4 of the rectangle as when rolling up the filling will spread. Fold the edges on top of the filling and start rolling up using the tea towel below. Place the strudel on the prepared baking sheet and brush with some melted butter. I recommend brushing the strudel at least two times during baking. Bake for about 35-40min or until golden. Either serve still warm or cold dusted with some icing sugar. Strudel can be frozen fully prepared. Be sure to add a few minutes to the bake and put it straight from the freezer to the oven.Plum Strudel With Cinnamon Streusel
Ingredients
Instructions
Notes
2 Comments
Bud
Monday March 23rd, 2020 at 10:38 AMNeed recipe for Cherry strudel. I use a 4ft by 6ft table . Can you give me the ingredients amounts that I would need for this size table
Jenny
Monday March 23rd, 2020 at 11:27 AMHi Bud, I don’t understand your question, the size of your table is irrelevant to the size of the dough. For conversions from feet to cm feel free to use any google converter. I believe you could replace the plums with the same amount of cherries.