Dried Pear Strudel
Ingrediënten
Ingredients for 10 Servings
- Basic strudel dough or ready-made dough
- Oil for brushing
- Flour for the work surface
- 7 tbsp 100 g Butter, melted
- Confectioner’s sugar for dusting
For the Filling
- 2 sticks plus 5 tbsp 300 g Butter
- ⅔ cup 80 g Confectioner’s sugar
- 16 Egg yolks
- 10.5 oz 300 g Walnuts, chopped
- 9 oz 250 g Dried pears, briefly soaked in water and chopped
- 3.5 oz 100 g Raisins, chopped
- 3.5 oz 100 g Dried plums
- 3 oz 80 g Candied orange peel, chopped
- 3 oz 80 g Cooking chocolate, grated
- Zest of 1 lemon
- Dash of salt
- Dash of cinnamon
- Dash of cardamom
- 16 Egg whites
- ⅓ cup 80 g Granulated sugar
Instructies
- Preheat oven to 340 °F (170 °C).
- Prepare the strudel dough according to the basic recipe, brush with oil, and let rest.
- For the filling, cream the butter with confectioner’s sugar and egg yolks.
- Mix in the rest of the ingredients except for the egg whites and granulated sugar.
- Begin to beat the egg whites and then beat them to stiff peaks with the granulated sugar.
- Carefully fold in the egg whites.
- Lay a cloth on the work surface and flour evenly.
- Lightly flour the dough as well and place on the cloth.
- With a rolling pin, roll the dough out as thinly as possible.
- Then slide both hands under the dough, palms down, and slowly stretch it in all directions, until it’s so thin that you could read a newspaper through it.
- Be very careful not to tear the dough.
- Saturate the dough with ¾ of the butter.
- Lay the filling on the dough in a strip.
- With the help of the cloth, fold the dough over the filling and then fold around once.
- Cut off extra.
- Place the strudel with the seam down on a buttered baking sheet and brush with the rest of the butter.
- Bake for about 40 minutes.
- Dust with confectioner’s sugar and serve.
Notes / Tips / Wine Advice:
As the crowning moment of a harmonious menu, sabayon and cranberry compote (see p. 182) make wonderful additions to dried pear strudel.
Drying Pears
In Austria, it is common to dry pears and then bake them into delightful breads, strudel, or cakes. Dried pear bread can be found throughout the Alps around Christmastime. Paolo Santonino, a Bishop’s secretary and diarist traveling north out of Italy, first talked about dried pears in 1485, when he went into raptures over a dish “of cooked, sweet pears that, served in a bowl, are covered in butter and semisweet spices.”
In Austria, it is common to dry pears and then bake them into delightful breads, strudel, or cakes. Dried pear bread can be found throughout the Alps around Christmastime. Paolo Santonino, a Bishop’s secretary and diarist traveling north out of Italy, first talked about dried pears in 1485, when he went into raptures over a dish “of cooked, sweet pears that, served in a bowl, are covered in butter and semisweet spices.”
