Milchrahmstrudel (Milk and Curd Cheese Strudel)

If you believe the legend, this sweet temptation - in Vienna called „Müllirahmstrudel“ - has its origin in the “Rote Stadl“, a restaurant in the beautiful Vienna Woods. If the labelling can be traced back to the main ingredient milk or to the supposedly originator “Ms Milli”, will always be a secret. Familiar instead – but not really easy – is the perfect preparation of this Viennese delicacy: The dough should become thin and transparent enough to read the newspaper through it. Don’t be scared, but discover the world of strudel dough following the motto: Practice makes perfect! Vienna wishes “Bon appetite”!

Serves: 5

Ingredients:

For the dough:

250 g (2 ¼ cups) flour (fine)
1 pinch salt
1 tbsp oil
2 tbsps butter (melted for daubing)
125 ml (0,2 pt) water (lukewarm)
2 egg yolks (for daubing)
icing sugar (for dusting)
oil
flour (for the work surface)
butter (for daubing)

Filling:

8 toasts (without crust)
125 ml (0,2 pt) milk
1 pod vanilla (pulp)
60 g (1/4 cup) butter
60 g (1/4 cup) icing sugar
1 cooking spoon vanilla sugar
1/2 lemon (rind, grated)
3 egg yolks
250 g (1 cup) curd cheese (20% fat)
150 g (2/3 cup) sour cream
3 egg whites
1 tbsp sugar
40 g (3/8 cup) raisins (soaked in rum)
1 handful almond splinters (roasted)

Sauce:

500 ml (0,9 pt) milk
2 tbsps sugar
1 egg

Preparation:

For the pastry, heap some flour onto a work surface and knead the pastry ingredients into a smooth, elastic dough. Shape into a ball and place in a soup bowl dribbled with oil. Cover, and refrigerate, preferably over night. On a lightly floured surface, roll out the pastry dough into a square with a rolling pin. Pull until very thin. To do this, make sure your hands are covered in flour, place one hand under the dough and use the other hand to carefully pull the dough out from the center. The dough should become so thin that it's almost transparent.

For the filling, heat up the milk with the vanilla pulp. Cut the toast into small cubes and pour over the vanilla milk. Beat the butter, icing sugar, vanilla sugar, lemon rind and egg yolks until creamy. Add the curd cheese and sour cream. Beat the egg whites until stiff, gradually sprinkling in the sugar. Fold the soaked bread into the egg yolk mixture. Finally, loosely fold in the egg whites. Brush the pastry dough with butter and sprinkle over the almond splinters. Spread the filling mixture over about 2/3 of the pastry and sprinkle the raisins evenly over the top.

Roll into a strudel. Place the strudel on a greased baking tray and brush with beaten egg yolk. For the sauce, whisk together all the ingredients and pour about a third of it over the strudel. Bake in a preheated oven at 180 °C for 40-50 minutes. While it's baking, regularly pour over the milk mixture and brush with melted butter. Slice to serve and dust with icing sugar.

Enjoy with: Sweet wine