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🇭🇺 Hungary · Cake

Flódni

Prep1.5 hrs + chilling
Cook1 hr
Total~3 hrs
Yield12-16 squares
DifficultyAdvanced

Ingredients

  • Dough: flour, butter, sugar, salt, eggs, a little water
  • Poppy seed filling: ground poppy seeds, sugar, orange zest, raisins, a splash of wine
  • Walnut filling: ground walnuts, sugar, water, orange zest
  • Apple filling: cooked apples, strained, with a little breadcrumbs to thicken
  • Plum jam, as the fourth filling
  • 1 egg yolk, for glazing

Traditionally eaten at Purim and Hanukkah, flódni is a distinctive Hungarian-Jewish pastry built from five thin sheets of dough separated by four completely different fillings — poppy seed, apple, walnut, and plum jam — each layered on in turn before a final sheet of dough is brushed with egg yolk and baked over all of it.

Method

  1. Make the dough and divide it into five equal portions; flatten into discs and chill for at least an hour.

  2. Make the poppy seed filling by cooking ground poppy seeds with sugar, orange zest, raisins and wine until thick; cool.

  3. Make the walnut filling by cooking sugar and water to a syrup, then stirring in ground walnuts and orange zest until spreadable; cool.

  4. Cook and strain the apples, stirring in a little breadcrumbs to thicken; cool.

  5. Roll out the first disc of dough into a rectangle and spread with the poppy seed filling.

  6. Roll out and layer the second disc on top, spread with the apple filling; repeat with the walnut filling, then the plum jam, each time topped with another rolled-out disc of dough.

  7. Brush the top layer with egg yolk.

  8. Bake at 175°C (350°F) for about 1 hour, until deep golden.

  9. Cool slightly, then cut into squares.

Recipe researched & rewritten from Tablet Magazine — Rachel Raj's Flodni.
Photo: Christian Michelides · CC BY-SA 4.0 · via Wikimedia Commons