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When my siblings and I were children, we used to play outside a lot (those were the days), even in winter. Or rather: especially in winter. We had a (small but great) hill in our back garden that used to be frequented by all the children in the neighbourhood as a sledge hill. When, after a long day of bobsleighing, building snowmen and doing snowball fights, we came back into the house, cold and wet with snow, my mum sometimes had made an authentic Bavarian apple strudel (what else?) to warm us up and get us back our strength. It was heaven! Even today, when I eat apple strudel, I remember those days and sometimes I still can smell the snow.

However, apple strudel is not only for winter but it’s a year-round sweet dish or dessert that’s best served with vanilla sauce. Our Bavarian strudel has a slightly thicker dough and is crispier than its Austrian brother which requires pulling the strudel dough very thinly. If you are new to making strudel dough or a bit intimidated by the pulling process, read this article where I’ve described step-by-step how to do it.

But no matter which strudel you prefer, just make sure you bake plenty of it. There won’t be any leftovers. 😉

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Authentic Bavarian Apple Strudel

Strudel dough:

300 g flour (all-purpose)

1 tbsp oil

1 pinch of salt

1 egg

125 ml (1/8 l) lukewarm water

oil for brushing

Instructions:

Sieve the flour into a bowl, add the other ingredients and knead it all into a smooth dough. Brush the dough with oil, put it back in the bowl, cover that with cling film and let it rest for at least 30 minutes (the longer, the more elastic the dough gets).

Apple filling:

6 – 8 fresh apples or a large jar of dry-canned apples

lemon juice

50 g raisins, soaked in rum to taste (optional)

50 g hazelnuts or almonds, chopped or flaked

50 g sugar

1 tsp cinnamon

Instructions:

If you use fresh apples, peel and core them and cut them into thin slices. Put them in a bowl and mix them with lemon juice to prevent them from browning. If you use dry-canned apples, just put them into the bowl.

Roast the nuts in a pan without fat until they are lightly brown. Immediately get them out of the pan and either grind them finely in a kitchen mixer or put them as they are (as chops or flakes) to the apples.

Add the raisins (if you like), sugar and cinnamon and mix it all well.

Dust a kitchen towel with some flour and roll out the strudel dough on it with a rolling pin. Now pull the dough with your hands to the desired size.

Spread the filling evenly across the whole dough but leave out about 2 cm (1 inch) from the edges.

Fold the shorter edges in and roll the strudel with the help of the kitchen towel. Put the strudel either on a baking tray or in a roasting pan that is either covered with a baking tray or greased with butter, lard or tallow.

Brush the strudel with butter and egg yolk and bake it in the preheated oven for 45 minutes at 180 °C (350 °F) (no fan-oven).

Vanilla sauce

Ingredients:

1/2 l milk

1/2 vanilla pod

80 g sugar

2 tbsp cornstarch

2 eggs

Instructions:

Separate the eggs and mix the egg yolks with sugar, corn starch and a bit of the milk to a homogenous mass.

Cut the vanilla pod lengthwise in half, scrape off the seeds and put the seeds and the pod in a pot. Add the milk and put it to the boil.

When the milk wells up, add the egg yolk mixture.

 

Stir it all well until the sauce thickens. Put the pot off of the plate.

While the sauce cools down, beat the egg whites and fold them into the (still hot) sauce.

Let it cool and stir once more before serving.

Cut this Authentic Bavarian apple strudel into slices and serve them with a huge dollop of vanilla sauce.

Variations

• Finely grind the nuts or almonds and add them with 200 g cream cheese to the filling.
• Bake the strudel in a deep roasting pan. Bring 120 ml milk, 25 g butter and 20 g sugar to the boil and add the mixture after 20 – 25 minutes of the baking time to the strudel. Let it bake until the strudel has soaked up all the milk (total baking time about 40 – 45 minutes).
• If you don’t want to make vanilla sauce, you can serve the strudel with vanilla ice cream as well.