Strudel & Streusel

What would a real german party be, after all the serious staple foods, piggly, salads and the such, without ending on a sweet note? It would simply not be.

Here is the outline of the dessert list of the recent Oktoberfest that I was lucky to be invited to:

- Kirschstreuselkuchen
- Apfelstrudel
- Bundtkuchen

Lets do a little language lesson:
Streusel [ˈʃtrɔyzl̩] (pronounciation) can be translated as granules or crumbles. You can see the crumbles on the pictured pie, that actually looks very similar to the Kirschstreuselkuchen at the Oktoberfest.


Streusel recipe
Streusel are made like this: use
- 150 g butter
- 150g sugar
- 200 g flour
Mix it all together with the butter being somewhat warm but not molten, until the mix turns crumbly. You can mix it with your hands or longer in the food processor to make thicker Streusel.
Sprinkle them on top of your cake or pie before baking and they will be a great crunchy, yummy topping that is often more enticing than the cake itself... as a kid I was often stealing the Streusel from the simple Streuselkuchen, because they were the best part of the whole thing..

Strudel [ˈʃtru:dl̩] (pronounciation), can be translated as vortex or swirl, or maelstrom. Maybe you can see how the dough & filling swirl inside this beauty?


Strudel is a pretty complicated and labour-intense pie; here you can find a very detailed and pictured description about that process. I tried it myself once, the Topfenstrudel variety (more commonly known is Apfelstrudel), and had in the end a big clump of dough next to a big clump of filling in the oven. It tasted amazing, though..


Bundtkuchen - this cake is named after its shape, and the pan it is made in, the Bundt-pan (see a picture of the cake below). It is often also called Guglhupf, which is not entirely correct - the Guglhupf pan results in a slightly different looking cake, as you can see on the right. It also is typically made with a yeast dough, which, to my knowledge is not true for Bundtcake.


The cake at the Oktoberfest was more in a Bundtcake shape, and was actually a chocolate cake based on a "Ruehrteig" (german for stirred dough).

Ruehrteig recipe
Mix
- 300g flour,
- 300g molten butter,
- 300g sugar,
- 300g eggs (about 5-6 eggs).
together to a smooth dough (molten butter comes last). You will notice that at first it is very fluid, but gets thicker with time. You don't want to stir it too long or it will turn greyish and a little too tough.
Add
- 50-100g cocoa powder
to the dough, maybe add some chocolate chips. Essentially, just get the taste of the dough right to your preference - some like more cocoa (me!), some less.
Pour this dough into whichever shape pan you prefer, and bake it for about 40 minutes at 425 deg F (about 220 deg C).



This base dough is very versatile, you can put anything in it. For example, replace a third of the flour with roasted ground hazelnuts, and add a little bit of rum in the end.
Or mix in pieces of 1-2 cubed apples and a cup of raisins, and a teaspoon of cinnamon in the final dough, and batter the pan with sliced almonds.
Or mix half of the dough with cocoa powder, pour the white dough into your baking pan, pour the chocolate dough on top, and swirl the two doughs into another using a fork - there's your classical marble cake.

The possibilities are endless.