Sunday, January 1, 2012

an Austrian moment.

For me, making apfelstrudel is like a right of passage into claiming my Austrian roots. I'd seen my mom do it. I'd even had her transport it in her luggage in 2007 when it replaced the traditional icing-coated wedding cake at our wedding. I'd eaten it Christmas eve and then warmed to perfection the following morning for post-christmas-present-opening breakfast.


Well, the Hay's family has their own tradition. Every Christmas they pick a new country and make feast (and I mean feast) from that country. This year happened to be Austria. . . which meant snitzel, spetzel . . . and yes, strudel (ps: these aren't swear words-- just German). Here's a little how to:

The trickiest part of the whole thing is stretching the dough out as thin as paper. It gets stretched enough to cover an entire card table (covered with a table cloth) as seen below. Then you top it with thin apples, bread crumbs fried in butter, cinnamon and a little bit of sugar. 

Next, introduce your Liesel to her roots by flying her over the strudel. At this point, everyone is usually really confused as to how you're going to get that paper-thin dough covered in apples that on a sheet into the oven. That's when you pull out a little Austrian magic:

Lift the sheet and the whole thing just rolls right up. It is pretty darn cool to watch. 

Take a Chinese bow. 

Get two people to help you slide it onto a cookie sheet and bake for 45 minutes. 

Out comes the perfect strudel. Dust with powdered sugar and watch it disappear in less than a day. 
change your shirt (don't bother brushing your hair) and take a photo. 

 Fröhliche Weihnachten!

3 comments:

Lindsey said...

Haha, loved this post Ang. A few comments:
1. Jealous you are more Austrian than me (!!!!)
2. Loved the Chinese bow (!!!) I'll go ahead and assume that was a little shout-out to me. ;) wink
3. Also loved that you changed your shirt for the picture and didn't comb your hair (ps. love that shirt, where's it from? Can I have it?) Love you girl, and miss you more than ever this time of year!!!!!!!
xoxox

gc.hatch said...

Angela, your applestrudel turned out BEAUTIFUL! I can't believe it was your first try! And your meal looked SO good! Do you have recipes you could share?

Allison said...

The struesel construction was amazing to watch. I had no idea how people made those things! And after watching the whole process, I could not begin to try to make one myself. The finished product was delicious too.