Baking yummy cakes 🥧 may be an all-year-round activity, however, as we enter the cold season, preparing sweets in the magical space of our kitchens adds to the coziness of each and every Transylvanian home. Even if you don’t bake the cake yourself, simply indulging in all the marvelous tastes transports you to a special kind of atmosphere.
Let’s have a look at some of the most popular Transylvanian 🦇 desserts 🥮, some of which you can easily find in restaurants and coffee shops while touring the region:
1. Romanian Sweet Bread (Cozonac)
The cozonac is a hand-kneaded sweet bread. Depending on the region, it may be filled with raisins, Turkish delight, nuts, chocolate or poppy seeds. One can braid it in 2 or 3, and one of the most favorite things to do is sit in the warm kitchen during wintertime and wait for the cozonac to “grow”. This desert is present at any important holiday celebration in Transylvania, especially at Christmas and Easter. Making it requires lots of skill and patience.
2. Potato-Plum Dumplings (Gomboți)
This is the kind of Sunday dessert that brings the entire family together, and it is one of the most common and traditional desserts one must try when visiting Transylvania. The taste of gomboți for first-timers (who will most likely become gomboți-addicts) is surprisingly special and memorable, due to the yummy plums which get wrapped in potato dough and rolled in sweet buttery bread crumbs. Yes, you read that right - potato dough is the base for this mouth-watering sphere-shaped dessert from Transylvania.
3. Romanian Soft-Cheese Doughnuts with Jam (Papanași)
This is the most universally loved and probably the most traditional Romanian and Transylvanian dessert. Papanași are doughnut-shaped sweets which made of cow’s soft cheese, flour, eggs, sugar, topped with delicious blueberry or sour cherry jam and loads of sour cream. The combination of flavors is a unique one, and you can try it out in almost any traditional Romanian restaurant as your tour around Transylvania.
4. Fruit Cake Squares with Plums, Apricots, Sour Cherries or Rhubarb 🍒
Cake with seasonal fruit is a big thing in Transylvania and the kind of dessert prepared almost weekly. These simple fruit cakes are made with a cake batter that contains only eggs, sugar and flour. To this, we add the actual fruit, depending on the season when we are baking it. Transylvanian orchards are rich with plums, apricots or sour cherries. Another common fruit cake ree recipe adored by Transylvanians is that of a fluffier version of an apple pie or strudel, with apples probably being the most common and most popular fruit in Romania.
5. Diplomat Cake Roll
This fabulous cake is the absolute queen of whipped cream and it is considered a somewhat sophisticated desert. You can find it at most celebrations or even at some business meetings. The cake base is all about mixing whipped cream charlotte and candied or fresh fruit. The topping is also made out of more whipped cream. No compromises here!
6. Homemade Chocolate & Chocolate Salami 🍫
Chocolate salami is one of our favorite homemade desserts. It requires no baking, which makes it a convenient choice for any cook, and it has a strong rum flavour. It is all based on smashed biscuits, butter, milk, sugar and, of course, cocoa. Our taste for chocolate extends with our one-of-a-kind homemade chocolate bars, which are especially surprising due to the ingredients used: looking a lot like fudge bars, this dessert recipe relies a lot on adding powder milk, this making its taste truly unique. The only other ingredients are cocoa, butter, sugar and water.
7. Loaf Cake(Chec)
Lighter and much easier to make than the cozonac, we bake and eat chec in Transylvania without needing any excuse for it! Our mothers usually bake it even on a weekly basis. The best one is prepared starting from a white loaf cake batter divided into two parts, with cocoa added to half of it. White batter and cocoa batter are added alternatively to the baking tin to obtain an appealing visual effect.
We hope you enjoyed this journey through some of the most loved local desserts from Transylvania. Sensory and culinary experiences are an important part of any travelling experience, so make sure you have the best people guiding you on your trip to the land of Dracula, so that you can enjoy the experience to the fullest!
Want to book a custom tour with us? We promise to introduce you to the best of what Transylvania has to offer. Including the best cakes in the land! 🍰