Strudel is dessert best known in Trentino Alto Adige: a very delicate pastry, crunchy on the outside and soft on the inside, which contains a generous and very sweet filling made with rennet apples, sugar, cinnamon, pine nuts, raisins and rum. In some areas of Trentino shortcrust pastry is also used and some versions report the use of different fruit such as cherries, apricots or pears. The strudel can also be served savory with sauerkraut or cabbage. We have decided to offer you a recipe that calls for the use of sweet apples of the Gala variety, but if you want to remain as faithful to tradition as possible, we recommend using rennet apples, which are more sour and aromatic. Once baked let your cake cool down before servingaccompanied by a dollop of delicious diplomat cream!

Preparation

1

Start by preparing the dough for the strudel. Break 1 egg into a large bowl, to which you are going to add oil and water.

2

Also add a pinch of salt and start mixing with a whisk to mix all the liquid ingredients well.

3

Add the sifted flour and continue to mix everything with a whisk.

4

Continue to knead using your hands until you get a smooth and homogeneous dough. Wrap it in transparent kitchen film and let it rest for 30 minutes.

5

While the dough is resting, start preparing the filling: soak the raisins in a bowl with warm water for about 30 minutes.

6

Grate the peel of ½ untreated lemon and extract the juice with a citrus squeezer, filtering it into a bowl to remove any seeds.

7

Add the sugar and cinnamon, mixing well with a spoon.

8

At this point, peel the apples and divide them into 4 wedges.

9

Remove the central part with the seeds, using a small knife, then cut each wedge into 2-3 mm slices, which you will place in the bowl with the lemon juice and sugar.

10

Drain and squeeze the raisins, then add them to the mixture. Also add the pine nuts and the spoonful of rum.

11

Mix everything well and temporarily keep aside, covered with plastic wrap.

12

Take the dough, unwrap it from the transparent film and roll it out on a work surface, placing a sheet of parchment paper on the dough. With a rolling pin, obtain a very thin sheet, about 2 mm, and form a rectangle of about 30×20 cm.

13

Sprinkle the entire surface of the dough with the breadcrumbs, which will serve to absorb the apple juices without softening the outer pastry.

14

Place the filling of apples, sugar, raisins, pine nuts and rum in the center of the dough, distributing it vertically with a spoon.

15

Close the sheet by overlapping the two shorter sides first. Then roll up all the dough lengthwise.

16

Transfer the strudel directly into the pan with the parchment paper used to spread the dough. Separately, in a small bowl, beat the remaining egg with a fork.

17

Brush the strudel with the egg, using a pastry brush. Take care to cover the entire surface of the dough, so that it can brown evenly.

18

Bake in a preheated static oven at 190° for 45 minutes. Once cooked and golden, remove from the oven and leave to cool, then sprinkle with icing sugar.

19

When the dessert is completely covered with a thin layer of icing sugar, gently transfer it onto a serving plate using kitchen spatulas. Serve warm.

Advice and tips

We suggest using a weak flour to prepare the dough, which must then be very elastic. Choose a flour with strength (W) lower than 170. Find the strength indication on the side of the package.

We recommend letting the strudel rest for a few hours before serving, then warming it slightly in the oven.

If you don’t like raisins you can simply omit them, as there is no substitution for this ingredient. If you want to try a slightly rustic version, you can add walnut kernels.

If your strudel gets too dark on the surface before the end of the cooking time, lower the temperature to 180° and possibly cover it with a sheet of silver paper.

storage

The strudel is preserved 2 days in a cake container. We do not recommend keeping it in the refrigerator because the dough would lose its crunchiness.

You can prepare the strudel and then freeze it raw, if you have used fresh ingredients. You can then cook it with the same cooking method in the oven, after letting it defrost directly on the pan covered with parchment paper.

History

Strudel is the best-known dessert of Trentino Alto Adige, but in reality has its roots in Turkey. In fact, the first variant of the dessert was brought to Hungary by the Turks in the seventeenth century, who prepared an apple-based dessert very similar to the typical baklava of the Balkan countries. The Hungarians modified the recipe, which was reworked again in Austria and, with the Austrian domination of Trentino, finally arrived in Alto Adige where the great variety and goodness of the apples contributed to making this dessert extremely popular. The word “strudel“, of German derivation, means “vortex” and refers precisely to the shape of the rolled cake.