Guys, I was fortunate enough to participate in a strudel online class by the Austrian Astrid Lamarche. I was not paid to say this, I really enjoyed that strudel class. If you want to check Astrid’s Instagram, you will be amazed as to how big she manages to stretch out strudel dough. So I got super ambitious and swore to myself, I want to get as good as she is. If she manages to only use 200 grams of flour (a typical amount for strudel) to stretch the dough over her entire dining table, I want to try that, too! And it worked, of course there still is room for improvement, but I was so happy that this is a super classic and traditional Austrian strudel. So below I am sharing the recipe with you guys.
Viennese apple strudel, would you like a piece? Yes, we are going to make this beauty from scratch, strudel dough is actually not as hard as you may think. Just be sure you have enough time at hand when you make the dough because it needs a pretty long resting period. That was actually what I tried to ignore this time and that’s why my first dough had a lot of holes and couldn’t be strechted properly. So feel free to start the dough the day beforehand. Resting it more than a few hours, e.g. overnight is no problem at all, you just give the gluten more time to develop. And then you will be rewarded with a delicious dessert with lots of apple flavor!
Let’s celebrate! It has been five years ago that I had a horrible bike accident including brain bleeding. You can check the details here. As I didn’t have any permanent damage thankfully, I want to celebrate with chocolate and invite you guys, we will attempt original Sachertorte! In 2014 I was fortunate enough to eat real Sachertorte in the Café Sacher in Salzburg. The below picture is one of the first pictures I took with my Sony camera and I am still proud of the shot. I mean, considering that I knew very little of photography, I would say it is a great shot! Sachertorte is a chocolate sponge cake that contains butter. Traditionally you will glue together the two cake layers with apricot jam and cover everything with a chocolate glaze. The cake is served with unsweetened whipping cream on the side. Of course I already have a recipe for Sachertorte on the blog. However, recently I got inspired to try again and make a version as close as possible to the original. Once I watched the movie “Sachertorte” on Amazon (a nice little romantic comedy in my opinion), I was hooked. In said movie the main character eats Sachertorte every day in the Sacher Café in Vienna in the hopes of meeting his sweetheart that mentioned she would celebrate her birthday in the cafe at 4pm. So I did some research. Obviously the recipe from the Sacher hotel was a big help. But, and I quote, I have to say that even the hotel Sacher mentions that “This is only an approximation of the original recipe, which of course must remain a tightly-kept secret.”
When I showed you in my stories on Instagram how I made this strudel, so many of you asked for the recipe and how I did it, so this is it! A classic apple strudel with some streusel or crumbs. I know that strudel dough can be intimidating, it was also for me, but like with everything, practice makes perfect. My first strudel looked very different, it had a lot of thick parts and I had so many wholes in it. But one of the good things of strudel is that the main event is the filling anyway, so even if your dough is not perfect, it does not matter that much because the dough is so thin and only is there to hold together the fruit filling or whatever you are going with.
It is high season for apricots and for that reason I was in the mood for something with apricots. These apricot dumplings are a popular Austrian dessert, which is also common in the south of Germany. Since I am a huge lover of apricots, I decided to make these. Unfortunately, I don’t have that many apricot recipes on this blog yet. You may enjoy these apricot turnovers, this delicious apricot tart, or this apricot sheet cake. Homemade apricot jam is also delicious on this famous Austrian chocolate cake Sachertorte. Needless to say that it was about high time to introduce these apricot dumplings with caramelized bread crumbs on the blog finally. Continue Reading…
Have you every heard of “Kaiserschmarren”? This is a giant pancake cut into small pieces, dusted with icing sugar and served with compote. It is very famous in Austria and the south of Germany. Since I recently moved from the north of Germany to the south, to Munich, I felt it was time I gave this traditional recipe another go. There is a whole war going on whether to include raisins or not, but I love the plain version, sorry. However, I decided to serve it with rhubarb compote. Normally you would serve it with a plum compote, but it is spring and I like rhubarb, so why not give this a little spin. So think a pancake cut in neat pieces, dusted with icing sugar and some nice fruit compote on the side and you get this Kaiserschmarren. Sounds good?
There hasn’t been enough chocolate on this blog yet. So Sachertorte it is! Ever heard of this delicious chocolate cake? It was invented in Austria and it has all the good stuff, lots of butter, lots of eggs (10 in total!), and chocolate, of course. Don’t bore me with cocoa, no, let’s go straight to chocolate. And with these delicious ingredients you make light and fluffy chocolate sponge cake. And to keep it all together, you use apricot jam as the glue. I just love it.
I actually had the chance to eat it in Austria. Originally the cake comes from Vienna, I did have the chance to eat it in Vienna, but, gasp, didn’t like it that much. The one I really enjoyed a lot was in Salzburg, the town Mozart is from. Below picture was one of the first pictures I took with my current camera, the Sony Nex7. If you would like to learn more about food photography, please check these blog posts. I looks great, doesn’t it? Austria is busy exporting its Sachertorte. I can’t blame them for doing that. Because yes, you want to dig into this super rich cake, believe me! What I like best about this rich chocolate cake is that you can actually export it because it gets better over time. The apricot jam seals everything and just to be sure, you pour a thick layer of chocolate ganache on everything, because more chocolate is even better, isn’t it? Continue Reading…