Chimney cake - a Hungarian treat

Chimneys are very much part of the season, so it's only appropriate that there's a chimney cake. Most of the foods we had at Christmas markets were prepared en masse, with literal cauldrons of mulled wine, vats of goulash, etc., but the carts selling individually prepared chimney cake over hardwood fires always had a line. Sweetened yeast dough is wrapped in a spiral around a rolling-pin-sized spindle on a spit until browned, then rolled in sugar and served. If you're outside on a cold winter night, the warm vapor will make the cake look like it's a literal chimney!

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Chimney cake (EN) / Kürtöskalács (HU) / Baumstriezel (DE) / Trdelnik (CZ)

• 1¾ cups / 8½ oz. / 240g all-purpose (plain) flour
• 2¼ tsp. / 1 packet / 7g active dry yeast OR 2 tsp. instant yeast OR 14g / ½ oz. fresh yeast
• 2 Tbsp. / 1 oz. / 30g sugar
• ⅛ tsp. / ¾ g salt
• 1 large egg, room temperature
• 3 Tbsp. / 1½ oz / 45g melted butter
• ½ cup / 120 mL lukewarm milk
• For brushing the rolling pin
  
  • melted butter
  • sugar
• For the topping:
  
  • Approximately ½ cup / 3½ oz. / 100g sugar
• For walnut sugar topping
  
  • About 1 cup / 4 oz. / 115g ground walnuts (or hazelnuts), mixed with about ½ cup / 3½ oz. / 100g sugar
  • 2 tsp. / 10mL / ¼ oz. / 6g cinnamon

If you are using active dry yeast, add ½ tsp. sugar to lukewarm milk and set aside for 5-10 minutes until it proofs (becomes foamy). Other yeast types can be mixed directly.
In a large bowl combine flour, sugar and salt. To this add the egg, milk, melted butter, and yeast. Stir the mixture until it comes together to form a dough (should come away from the bowl), and then knead for about five minutes. It will be sticky. Don’t be tempted to add any flour. Grease your hand if needed, transfer to a well greased container.
Allow the dough to rise for 60 minutes at room temperature until doubled in volume.
Punch down the dough and divide into 4 equal parts about 4 oz. / 115g of each.
On a floured surface, roll out into ⅙ inch / 4mm square-shaped sheet. Using a pizza cutter cut the dough into a long spiral ribbon about ¾ in. / 2cm wide.
Make sure to cover the rolling pins very well. Brush them with melted butter.
Wrap one end of the dough strip around the spit/rolling pin, tucking in the end so the dough doesn’t unwind. Keep the dough very thin (under ¼ inch (6 mm)) as you stretch and wind it on the rolling pin. Roll to flatten it / press it together, enough to make it flat, but with the seams visible.
Brush with melted butter, roll in sugar.
Place in roasting pan and bake in a preheated moderately hot oven 375°F/190ºC/gas mark 5 for 25 minutes. If using broiler (375ºF/190ºC) in the oven it will take about 20 minutes.
If you are grilling over a fire it should take about 6 minutes to cook, until deep golden brown and most or all of the sugar has caramelized. Turn the rolling pin at once least once (or more) throughout baking time to ensure uniform cooking.
When cake is done roll it in sugar. If you are using other toppings brush with butter, then roll the finished cake in the toppings of your choice.
Tap the mold on a table top to release the cake and set it upright to cool.

Recipe adapted from https://honestcooking.com/kurtoskalacs-chimney-cake/

There's exhaustive documentation, including a 1784 manuscript, at the Wikipedia page on Kürtőskalács

I realize you need a spindle, though.

Chimney cake spindle
If you have a rotisserie of some kind with a typical ⅜ in. spit, it’s pretty easy to make your own spindle, the real thing is €€€ from Hungary. You will need:

• saw of some kind
• Long ½ in. drill bit (E.g.)
• Long ⅜ in. drill bit (E.g.)
• Triangular file (E.g.) or other slim file that will fit in a ⅜ in. hole
• coarse and fine sandpaper
• 2 in. hardwood dowel

Step 1: Mark your dowel for the length of your long drill bit. Cut crosswise. A miter saw is easiest, but anything that can make a relatively straight cut will work: band saw, reciprocating saw, even a hand saw in a miter box, but it is a really thick dowel!

Step 2: Drill a ⅜ in. hole down the center of the dowel, the whole length. A drill press is great if you have it, but precision is not important here as long as you’re reasonably close to the center. Next, expand to a ½ in. hole almost the whole length, but leave the last ~1 in. at the smaller diameter.

Step 3: With the file, slightly expand the ⅜ end in a square shape, to fit the square cross section of the spit. The goal is something that fits snugly, neither so tight you have to force it on, nor so so loose that it will fall off on its own. Test the fit as you go, it doesn’t take much.

Step 4: Sand with the coarse and fine sandpaper. I like to take off the sharp edge of the cylinder as well as make the sides smooth. This is not just for feel, we want the dough to slide off easily. Wash well, there’s probably lots of sawdust in the hole!

Step 5: (optional) Bake the spindles in a 350ºF oven for an hour to release any unwanted wood odors.

[Jenise]

How interesting! Never saw or had anything like that. Are you Hungarian, Walt? My stepmother was, first generation, so she introduced us to a lot of wonderful Hungarian food.

How interesting! Never saw or had anything like that. Are you Hungarian, Walt? My stepmother was, first generation, so she introduced us to a lot of wonderful Hungarian food.

Me neither, never saw it before. When I started to pay attention, it was at most of the other big Christmas markets we went to. Often with a gas flame, or, worse, electric broiler. There are a few places in the US that sell them for carryout or mail-order, but that almost completely defeats the purpose. Like those packs of pre-cooked crêpes, they are the same size, shape, and ingredients as the real thing, but why bother?

No Hungarian ancestry that I know of, just get obsessed with various culinary specialties of the places we visit. I also made an authentic goulash with imported Hungarian capsicum paste, that was very tasty. If I got a deep fryer, I'd like to try langós, that's Hungarian elephant ear, if you're a fan of fair food. Do you still make any of your stepmother's dishes?

[Jenise]

I do, in fact. Her cabbage rolls were the best I've ever tasted--pork and ham finely ground together mixed with garlic and rice then cooked in a light tomato/sauerkraut broth with smoky kielbasa chunks. She also made some old-country sauerkraut/corned beef balls that were heavenly. She never made goulash, but our best friends back in the 80's were Hungarian and her goulash set the standard for that food, especially on spaetzle. Other things I remember and reproduce include some unsual vegetables, like creamed savoy cabbage seasoned with powdered coriander seed. She also made a lemon-poppyseed cake that transcends anything by that name I've ever known since, it included a can of apricot paste. Apricots and plums, like pork, appeared in a lot of her food. She learned it all from her mother, Rosie, who came to America as a young bride to a widow with four small children, but never really learned to speak English. Rosie's food was considered so authentic in the Los Angeles area that word got around among Hungarian immigrants who became frequent dinner guests, including actor Bela Lugosi. He and her father, also named Bela, would go through a lot of Bela's home-made Slibovitz which I'm spelling phonetically if not correctly, it's a traditional plum brandy.

I have had chimney cake at an open-air market in Prague. It fills the same ecological niche as funnel-cake does in American county fairs.

I do, in fact. Her cabbage rolls were the best I've ever tasted--pork and ham finely ground together mixed with garlic and rice then cooked in a light tomato/sauerkraut broth with smoky kielbasa chunks. She also made some old-country sauerkraut/corned beef balls that were heavenly. She never made goulash, but our best friends back in the 80's were Hungarian and her goulash set the standard for that food, especially on spaetzle. Other things I remember and reproduce include some unsual vegetables, like creamed savoy cabbage seasoned with powdered coriander seed. She also made a lemon-poppyseed cake that transcends anything by that name I've ever known since, it included a can of apricot paste. Apricots and plums, like pork, appeared in a lot of her food. She learned it all from her mother, Rosie, who came to America as a young bride to a widow with four small children, but never really learned to speak English. Rosie's food was considered so authentic in the Los Angeles area that word got around among Hungarian immigrants who became frequent dinner guests, including actor Bela Lugosi. He and her father, also named Bela, would go through a lot of Bela's home-made Slibovitz which I'm spelling phonetically if not correctly, it's a traditional plum brandy.

Ah, Slivovitz, I think of that as Polish but presumably it's found throughout the Slavic world if it made it as far south as Hungary. Interesting to me that it's always a liqueur, seems like it would also make an excellent eau de vie.
I am curious about the creamed savoy cabbage, that makes a lot of sense. Regular cabbage would need so much processing to get it to a creamy texture, but savoy would work in that application. And with ground coriander, could be really good.

I have had chimney cake at an open-air market in Prague. It fills the same ecological niche as funnel-cake does in American county fairs.

Yes, I found an article about how it's become very popular in Czechia. I do love a good funnel cake but on the other hand all fried dough kind of tastes the same, and the real flavor is in the toppings. A funnel cake is the same as an elephant ear is the same as a donut. Chimney cake seems to be a bit more distinctive because of the open flame aspect.

Is trdelník traditional? Tourists say: who cares?
“It's traditional from Hungary. It's kürtőskalács, the name in Hungary, I think. And I have to say it's traditional from the Czech Republic, for the people, but it's from Hungary.”

There's a small chain of chimney cake shops (and a food truck) in Toronto, which serves them alone or as ice cream cones. See https://www.originalchimneys.com/.