This was a fun one to make, known as Punschkrapfen they can be found in Austria, Hungary and Czech Republic
Usually finished with fondant for a much smoother finish, mine were coated with ruby chocolate instead (I had a 1kg bag that needed using). Much tastier than it looks!
Following on from my intro post, here is my second bake of the empire.
I’ve never eaten these before - it was a fun process to make. I am very much a novice baker so excuse the imperfect finish.
A lot of of the recipes I found called for ready-made punschkrapfen coating - where I live this isn’t available, but I did have a whole bunch of pink ruby chocolate that needed to get used so this version of the dessert has an inauthentic chocolate coating on the outside as opposed to just fondant.
I’ll probably interchange between Austria and Hungary each week, and try to do at least one cake for each of the crown lands of Austria. Hungary is a bit more difficult to carve up in manageable pieces so I may just be a little less structured with that half.
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And a little bit about the cake:
Whenever they baked grand tortes, Viennese bakers
ended up with massive piles of leftover cake trimmings and broken sponge edges. Instead of throwing them away, they mashed the crumbs together with chocolate, apricot jam, and a heavy-handed pour of Austrian Inländer rum. They squished that boozy paste between two thin layers of fresh sponge cake, drenched the whole cube in a sticky, hot-pink rum glaze, and turned bakery scraps into a high-end delicacy.
While some tour guides love to claim it dates back to the Ottoman sieges, the pastry really took off around the turn of the 20th century. During the twilight of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Vienna’s coffeehouses were the epicenter of art, gossip, and indulgence. The Punschkrapfen fit right in - it was visually loud, intensely sweet, and high-proof enough to give you a buzz before noon. Famous spots like Demel and Sluka couldn’t make them fast enough.
But the best part of its history is how it crossed over into political satire. The Austrian writer Thomas Bernhard famously used the dessert to mock the national psyche, coining a phrase that almost every Austrian knows: "Außen rot, innen braun und immer ein bisserl bsoffen"—red on the outside, brown on the inside, and always a little bit drunk. It’s a sharp jab at people who look like progressives (red) but hold far-right or fascist (brown) views in private. Even today, whenever there’s an election or a messy political coalition, Viennese bakeries will pile Punschkrapfen in their front windows as a silent, sarcastic joke.
Are these Aldi kinder dupes. If I could only pick one dessert to repeatedly eat for the rest of my life it would be this
Added bonus that they cost a ridiculously low $0.45 per bar
From two different online orders, two days apart
I want to bake as many Austro-Hungarian cakes as possible over the next few months. Which cakes would you include in the list?
Sachertorte and Esterhazy are the obvious inclusions so far (photo is of my Sachertorte, baked today)