A dessert that everyone likes, with apples that lead the common thread of the top notes and melt into the voluptuous aftertaste of raisins, pine nuts and walnuts, combined with vanilla and cinnamon
South Tyrolean cuisine is the expression of two great culinary arts: the tasty Tyrolean cuisine and the graft of imaginative Italian cuisine. All with a hint of Viennese, Hungarian and even Bohemian flavor. It is therefore the variety that distinguishes the South Tyrolean cuisine and there is no single recipe for its most famous dessert, the Strudel. If the filling mostly presents variations on the theme, it is the dough that boasts the most incisive differences: the strudel, in fact, sees in the original recipe the shortcrust pastry but it is frequent the preparation with the so-called puff pastry. And for a touch of extra flavor, often the Strudel is presented with ice cream, cream or cream, served separately.
Ingredients
For the pastry:
- 300 gr of white flour
- 150 g of butter at room temperature
- 150 gr of white granulated sugar
- 1 big egg
- enough milk (better whole)
- grated rind of 1 untreated lemon
- 1/2 sachet of vanilla yeast powder
- 1 pinch of baking soda
- 1 pinch of salt
For the stuffing:
- 700 grams of Golden Delicious or Gala apples
- 70 gr of white granulated sugar
- 70 grams of golden breadcrumbs in butter
- 50 g of raisins
- 2 tablespoons of rum
- 30 gr of pine nuts
- 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract
- 1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon powder
- 1 tablespoon of citrus peel (grated)
For the coverage:
- Icing sugar
- 1 egg yolk
Method
We start the Strudel preparing the pastry. In a bowl, knead the butter - which must be at room temperature - together with sugar, lemon zest and vanilla sugar, until a homogeneous mass is obtained. Then add the milk, the egg, the flour and finally the yeast: at this point we can start to knead everything well. Recall that the consistency of the pastry should be soft and then put to rest for at least half an hour.
It's time to think about the stuffing: peel and cut the apples into slices or pieces, depending on your preference, but if we use organic apples we can also keep the peel. In a bowl together with the golden breadcrumbs in butter, raisins, rum, pine nuts, cinnamon powder, vanilla extract and citrus peel. The original recipe includes the use of lemon, but we can give a more sweet and aromatic note also joining orange and bergamot. Apples have to soak up the liquid to get all the flavor. Meanwhile, turn the oven on at 180° and line a wide pan, with low sides, with oiled paper. Take the pastry and spread it on the surface previously dusted with flour, printing a rectangular shape with a length of about 50 cm and 30 wide.
Place the pastry on the baking paper, add the apple-based filling and roll the dough. To give the unmistakable browning of the Strudel, do not forget to brush the surface with the egg yolk. The cooking time in the oven is about 30-40 minutes. Once cooked, let the Strudel cool and then sprinkle with icing sugar.
...good appetite!
Main image from mangiarebuono.it
