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There are aromas, flavors, recipes that connect us directly to Christmas. A couple of years ago it happened to me with these gingerbread and spiced plum cookies, and this year I had the same feeling with the Kürtőskalács, Trdelnik or Trdlo recipe. Cinnamon is one of those spices that awakens in our unconscious that illusion and joy of these holidays. Along with ginger, it is one of the most used spices in Christmas pastries, so when a space is invaded by this aroma, the connection to this time of year is almost inevitable.
Last year we were on vacation in Prague, where I met this wonderful sweet, but under a different name. There they call them “Trdlo” or “Trdelnik” and it is very common to find them all over the streets. Its aroma floods the alleys, passages… It is wonderful to walk with that special fragrance. Besides that we can find them with infinity of fillings… I don’t know how many I could eat, oh my God!
Kürtőskalács origin.
“Kürtőskalács” [kourtoesch-kaalatsch] is a typical specialty of the Hungarian gastronomy of Transylvania. It was the bakery of the Szeklers, specialized in events like weddings, baptisms… was who created this cake so famous nowadays. In Szeklerland it is still a tradition that is kept alive.
It is a sweet bread made with a leavened dough that is rolled up on a wooden roller to be baked on embers. The outside is brushed with melted butter and covered with a mix of sugar and cinnamon, mostly, but can also be sprinkled with nuts.
Kürtőskalács made in Szeklerland takes its name from the wooden roller on which it is baked which, in this region, is called a chimney and the result of the sweet reminds one of a chimney. The ingenuity of the Szeklers showed that the live coal used for cooking and heating can also be used for something else. They took the embers out of the stove, placed them on the oven, and cooked this sweet bread.
Depending on where we eat it, we can find them under different names:
- Kürtőskalács: Original name, Transylvania. It used to be a typical festive gift made by Hungarians at special events and weddings.
- Chimney Cake: It is usually called this way in English, because of its similarity to a fireplace and because of the difficulty in pronouncing the original name.
- Trdelnik or Trdlo: name of Czech or Slovak origin, under this name we can find them in Prague.
- Kurtosh:is pronounced as it is written, so it is much easier to remember.
- Makara: Brand created in Turkey. Appeared in a popular Turkish drama “Kuzey Guney”.
- Baumstriezel: or “tree cake”, can be found at the German and Austrian Christmas markets along with their famous “Glühwein”.
There are many legends and possible origins of “kürtőskalács”.
The first known record that mentions these cakes baked on a rotating spit over ashes dates from the medieval period (around 1450) and is found in a manuscript from Heidelberg. The description mentions a strip of leavened dough that has to be wound in the form of a spiral around a baking cylinder brushed with egg before baking.
First known recipe originated in Transylvania and was included in the cookbook of Countess Mária Mikes de Zabola in 1784, (“‘kürtős kaláts’ à la Mrs. Poráni”). However, in this recipe, there is no mention of the addition of sugar in its preparation. A recipe from the cookbook written by Kristóf Simai in 1795 in Upper Hungary (today’s Slovakia) mentioned for the first time “post-cooking sweetening”.
But, according to legend, the kürtőskalács existed centuries before and even saved a besieged city from starvation.
The scholar and writer Balázs Orbán recorded the history of the kürtőskalács in his famous work: “Describing Szeklerland“, in 1868. The dessert, he wrote, was created by women in what is today the Székely Land / Szeklerland, the Hungarian-speaking region of Transylvania, during the Mongolian invasion in 1241, “The Marefalva Dodge“.
When the Mongols invaded the countryside, the people of Marefalva retreated to the caves in the hills above the village. The Mongols followed them, but they could not reach the protected area. Instead, they laid siege to the caves in an attempt to starve the Seklers. As the siege continued, both sides began to run out of food. The Seklers knew that the army waiting outside had as few resources as they did, yet the women in the cave devised a plan to fool the invaders.
They took all the leftover flour and mixed it with water and ashes from the chimney to make it look bigger. Then they rolled it up in a long wooden stick and baked it, creating a bread that looked big, but was hollow inside. The Seklers brought the food out of the caves for the enemy to see, essentially saying; “Look how well we still live, while you guys are starving”.
Seeing this, the Mongols saw no other option. They burned the village and left.
Like all legends, it may or may not be true.
There is another one in Europe and it probably goes back to the ancient Greeks. The Hungarian nobility popularized this candy in the 18th century, but it was later reduced during the years when the region was walled by the USSR.
After the fall of the wall, when all of Romania – including the Transylvania region – was opened again to tourists, visitors from Hungary went to the Sekler-Hungarian villages, where the locals sold kürtőskalács. This sweet bread has become the image of Transylvania and the Sekler-Hungarians in Hungary. In the mid-1990s, it was already popular in both countries.
Trdelnik from Szakolca is based on a very similar preparation; the outside is usually covered with chopped nuts before cooking and sugar which is added only after cooking. An extract from “Rézi néni Szakácskönyve” (Aunt Rézi’s Cookbook), published in Szeged, Hungary, in 1876, shares the first recipe in which sugar is added by sprinkling it on kürtőskalács before baking to achieve a caramelized sugar coating.
It was almost 100 years before the next step in the evolution of kürtőskalács was first mentioned.
The appearance of a caramelized sugar coating. Ágnes Zilahi’s cookbook entitled Valódi Magyar szakácskönyv (The Real Hungarian Cookbook), which appeared in Budapest in 1892, presents this recipe.
The first mention of additional coatings applied to the pastry coating appears in the Rézi néni szakácskönyve (Aunt Rézi’s Cookbook). The use of ground, chopped or candied nuts used in the coating only became popular at the end of the 20th century. It seems that Pál Kövi’s cookbook, Erdélyi lakoma (Transylvanian Feast), from 1980, was the first source to use this type of covering. From here on, they started to expand much more; cinnamon, coconut, cocoa
The current and most commonly used variant of kürtőskalács evolved in Szeklerland in the first half of the 20th century.
Unbaked dough, placed around a specific baking cylinder, is flattened (rolling on itself) on a flat surface sprinkled with granulated sugar. In this way, the dough becomes uniform, achieving a much more attractive and elegant finish.
The first written record of this procedure appears in the cookbook of Mrs. Zathureczky, née Manci Zlech, which was published in Barót between 1934 and 1943. The cookbook entitled Erdélyi ízek (Tastes of Transylvania), which appeared in Csíkszereda (Szeklerburg/Miercurea-Ciuc), published by Proprint Press in 2007, details the process of making this recipe in this way.
And that is how I will show you how to make these Trdelnik or Kürtőskalács 😉
