One of the most popular pastries in Austria-Hungarian empire since 18th century until now. The oldest recipe for strudel is dated from the year 1696 and is saved in the municipal library of the Strudel’s capital – in Vienna. Apparently strudel is related to baklava and came to Austria via Turkish to Hungarian and than from Hungarian to Austrian cuisine.
Strudel consists of pastry jacket filled with grated cooking apples, sugar, cinnamon, raisins, hazelnuts and bread crumbs. The basic pastry is made from flour, oil or butter and salt, although there are many variations to this. Here for example I show you a pastry where oil and salt are replaced by dark beer. The dough should be thin and elastic, traditionally prepared by flogging against a table. Luckily we have nowadays good mixers that do the hard work for us.
The best is if you can serve your strudel warm and sprinkled a bit with icing sugar. In many countries strudel is served with different toppings like vanilla ice cream, whipped cream or custard. Strudel is usually accompanied by tea or coffee but in some Viennese cafe it is served as real treat with champagne.
RECIPE:
350 g flour
250 g margarine
12 spoons of dark beer
700 g cooking apples (crisp and aromatic)
juice from one small lemon
3-4 teaspoons of cinnamon
50 g raisins (better if they were marinated in rum overnight)
50 g hazelnuts or walnuts
80 g sugar
2 spoons of bread crumbs
1 egg
icing sugar for dusting
Pre-heat the oven to 180oC. In the mixer whisk well margarine with flour and dark beer until you get smooth and elastic dough. Make a ball from it and place it for about 20 min. to a pre-warmed casserole. Make sure the dough is kept in warm. Then if you are not ready to continue to roll it out, move the dough into fridge and leave to rest there until you can proceed further.
Meanwhile wash the apples (you can peel them if you prefer), cut them into quarters and remove the core. Then grate them into thin slices or just cut them into very small pieces in the mixer. Stir grated apples with cinnamon, juice from lemon (it prevents that cut apples turn brownish), raisins and nuts.
Separate the ball of strudel dough into two parts, sprinkle well the working surface with flour and roll the pastry into thin sheets (one sheet from each part of the dough). Spoon the apple mixture onto the pastry leaving 2 cm empty around the edges. Then very carefully roll up the pastry like a big cigar and move it onto greased baking tray. Brush the pastry with the mixture of whisk egg. Bake at 180oC for about 40-50 min. until the pastry is golden brown on the surface. Dust the warm cake with icing sugar and serve warm.
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