Food forms a very important part of our travels around the world. I have already posted about places to see in Vienna and our amazing Vienna Opera tour. But what I also wanted to highlight were the two places in Vienna were we had amazing and memorable food experience. When in Vienna it is a given that one has to try the Austrian desserts, especially the Apple strudel.

Now, a friend was reminded of the scene from Inglorious Bastards when I mentioned Apple Strudel on my Instagram few days back. But as opposed to the brilliant acting in the movie and that the strudel was served with cream, the one we were served was with vanilla sauce which truly made it delicious. So before we decided to tour Opera, we stopped at Cafe Museum near Karlsplatz.

Cafe Museum

Apple strudel is the traditional yet popular pastry in Austria. Even though apple flavour is most famous, strudels can be of other flavours as well. Cafe museum is relatively famous cafe with seating arrangements indoor as well as outside. Since we were visiting in summer, we chose to
Serving water with Coffee dates back to ancient times in order to show how much the customer is valued as both water and coffee were rare and precious. I would highly recommend this place if visiting Vienna.

Cafe Mendez

On second day of our stay in Vienna we visited Cafe Mendez which is actually in the same lane as Cafe Museum. We had a scrumptious meal at this place. The vibe for the cafe is extremely relaxed yet fun. There are weird paintings and drawings by the guests. There is seating arrangements outside as well inside but I guess outside seats are always full during summer,even though the cafe had many empty seats inside,such a typical European thing to happen.

The food and the menu was very tempting and we had an overall wonderful experience. Servers were friendly and taste as well appearance of food was perfect for photos and stomach. We had vegetarian quesedilas and a chicken burger. Both the dishes as seen in the picture were accompanied with toppings and extra sauces.

Well while going through these photos for this blog, I decided to recreate Apple strudel here back home.

Recipe for Apple Strudel

Ingredients

• 4 apples – deseeded, cored, peeled and chopped into small pieces
• 3/4th cup granulated white sugar
• 1 tsp cinnamon powder
• 1 tsp nutmeg powder
• 2 tbsps lemon juice
• 1 tbsp cornstarch
• Pinch of salt
• 5 sheets of ready rolled filo pastry
• 50gm melted unsalted butter
• 2tbsps roasted breadcrumbs
• Powdered icing sugar

For the sauce

• 1 and half cup water
• 1 cup granulated white sugar
• 3 tbsps cornstarch
• 4 tbsps unsalted butter
• 4 tsps vanilla extract
• Half cup milk
• Pinch of salt

Method

Preheat the oven at 200 degrees Celsius and line a baking tray with parchment or baking paper. Ensure the filo sheets and butter is at room temperature.

In a bowl, add the apples, sugar, lime juice, salt, cornstarch, cinnamon powder, nutmeg powder. Mix it thoroughly and set it aside. Add breadcrumbs after a while to ensure it soaks up most of the syrup created naturally. It is a must to add lime juice so as to avoid the browning of apples.

Now place the filo sheets on kitchen table on a tea towel or a baking paper. Layer the first layer of filo sheet, brush it with melted butter and place a new sheet on it. After layering five such sheets, add the apple mixture along the length of the sheet but place it in the middle leaving space to wrap the contents from all sides.

Brush the entire pastry with remaining butter. Place the pastry in the baking tray in such a manner that the folds of the Strudel are on the bottom side touching the tray.

Place the tray in the centre rack of the oven. Bake the pastry at 200 degrees for 15 minutes then lower the temperature to 180 degrees and bake for another 15 minutes.

While the pastry is baking, prepare the vanilla sauce to accompany the pastry. Keep the water to boil in a sauce pan while you mix the granulated sugar and cornstarch in a separate bowl. Once the water starts to boil, slowly add this mixture while continuously whisking to ensure that no lumps are formed. Keep whisking on medium heat. Once the sugar and corn starch slightly thicken, then remove the saucepan from heat. Add salt, vanilla extract, butter and keep whisking. I added milk slowly in the end to bring the sauce to the right consistency.

Bake the Strudel until its golden brown in colour. Let the strudel cool after 30 minutes of baking. I checked if the apples were cooked by sticking a skewer in between. Remove the pastry on a cutting board and sprinkle it with powdered sugar. Serve it with apple sauce. I thought the first layer was super flaky but I didn’t mind.

Hope you will enjoy making this recipe at your home. Do let me know how it turned out. Of course you can use brown sugar instead of white sugar or add raisins to the pastry but I did what was easily available for me.