Discover foreign cuisines is always a challenge: you could love or hate it. Last time me and Melissa introduced Anna to Italian foods and we made pizza, this time was Anna’s turn and so on Tuesday 4 of April 2017 we met at her home to cook the original Viennese Apfelstrudel, typical Austrian but also German sweet.
Because my relatives live in the mountain, near the border with Südtirol (Trentino in Italian) and Austria, I know very well that sweet, I ate a lot of times and I love it, so I was happy that Anna chose to teach me how to cook it and that she gave us the original recipe.
To make the dough you need 250g of flour, 2g of salt, 50g of eggs, 100g of hot water and 20 g of oil. Once you have all these things you have to mix them into a soft dough, forming the dough into a ball and leaving it resting 20-30 minutes. After that you have to roll the dough into a rectangular square on a floured cloth and flatten it by hand very thin and brush with melted butter. Because it’s difficult and you have to practice a lot of times, we decided to leave Anna doing this passage while me and Melissa were looking at her.
At this point you have to fill your strudel with 150g of breadcrumbs, 150g of cinnamon sugar, 170g of raisins, 10g of lemon juice, 1kg of peeled-cored-sliced apples and in the end one shot of rum! When you have the ingredients you have to mix them before all together and then spread the filling on the dough. Me and Melissa worked on this, trying to put filling everywhere in order to make the strudel filled in an appropriate way and cooking better. Then Anna rolled the dough and we put it into the oven at 190 °C.
While we were waiting for the Apfelstrudel (Apfel in German means apple), we talked a lot about our experience of Exchange students and about the city and friends that we met here! When the strudel was golden brow we pulled it out of the oven and we left it resting and in the meanwhile we prepared tea.
In the end when everything was ready we ate the strudel and drank tea. It was so good that I take three slices and I wasn’t able to stop eating it. It was really like the one that I use to eat when I visit my relatives in the mountain. When I will come back home for sure I will make it, with my mum and my sister that love cooking.
It was a great afternoon! Keep in touch. Tschüss
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