♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ - I'm often asked, what is my favorite culinary destination?

I have to say, maybe Transylvania, just north of the Carpathian Mountains.

Now, my guide was Irina Georgescu author of Tava and a couple other cookbooks.

And I discovered something amazing, which is the baking of Romania.

Now, in the baking, there are a few recipes we brought back.

One is a cross between a lemon bar and cheesecake called lichiu.

It comes out in a big slab, it's absolutely amazing.

Now, they also do pies in a very different way.

They have two layers of dough with a thin layer of filling.

In this case, it's apples and walnuts.

It's absolutely delicious.

And they also do a snack cake, which is just a basic cake recipe with some fruit in it and topped with a meringue layer.

So please stay tuned as we bring you the lovely, the wonderful baking of Transylvania.

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♪ ♪ - I think Romanian baking is so diverse that you can find inspiration at every level.

(both speaking Romanian): (both chuckle) - We bake all the time, so we bake for special occasions.

We bake for religious celebrations, but we also bake just to have a homemade snack on the table to keep us going.

When someone just arrives unexpectedly, we just make a quick dessert.

It's all about making something sweet.

And everywhere you go, people will make some donuts for you.

And we have this iconic dish called papanasi-- curd cheese donuts, fried, and then served with sour cream and jam.

Anca Vlad in Vama Buzaului made us the best I've ever had.

They look spectacular.

- (speaking Romanian) - Transylvanians are famous for taking their time, so when they bake, they know how to wait for something that has good results.

- The biscuits are ready.

(speaking Romanian): (laughter) ♪ ♪ We're going to meet the gastronomic superstars of Saxon Transylvania.

Extraordinary bakers and cooks with a passion for tradition.

- I'm Corina Bozgali.

- I am Ioana Gherghel.

We are in Romania, in Transylvania, in a small village called Harman.

- Look!

- Wow.

And you are at HOF Harman, our homestead.

The rhubarb cake is very common in Transylvania.

It has eggs and sugar, which are mixed together and with some vanilla.

Then you add some baking powder, some lemon, oil, and milk.

Mix it very well together, and then flour.

- (speaking Romanian) - And in the tray goes the rhubarb, with some semolina to take out the moisture.

- Rhubarb was introduced by a governor of Transylvania who was Saxon.

- So you won't find rhubarb anywhere else in Romania but here in Saxon Transylvania.

So you make like a meringue, cook it for about ten minutes.

♪ ♪ We are meeting Ibi Macarov in the charming village Saschiz.

Ibi is famous for her lichiu pie.

This pie says Saxon Transylvania more than any postcard.

- (speaking Romanian): - The Saxon pie, the lichiu, is actually baked in the residual heat of the baking oven after the bread is baked in there.

You don't want to just have nothing in that oven, So you usually put something that can be slow cooked.

And if it's slow baked, then it is the lichiu.

- (chuckles) ♪ ♪ - Now it's time for something completely different.

This is one of the greatest recipes in the world you've never heard of, I'm sure of that.

It's called lichiu.

It's from Romania-- Transylvania, to be exact.

And these little Saxon villages-- most have been restored-- go back to the 14th century, when Saxons were brought into Romania.

They were great farmers and also very good at fighting.

But these are charming villages, and the baking in Romania is amazing.

It's recipes you've never heard of, like lichiu.

♪ ♪ It starts with flour.

It starts with sugar and salt.

Now, this is a yeasted base.

Until about 1800, a lot of desserts use yeast as the leavener, because there was nothing else.

Then people started using the equivalent of baking powders-- hartshorn, which are made from antlers.

And finally, by about 1840, 1850, people came up with baking powder and baking soda.

But yeast was the leavener of choice for a very long time.

So I'll do this slowly, drizzle it in.

Now, this is going to be a fairly wet dough, sort of halfway between a bread dough and a cake batter.

And we're gonna do this for a couple of minutes just to smooth out the texture.

And then we're gonna let it sit, obviously, with the yeast.

You know, one of the interesting things about going to Romania is that there's a tremendous number of tourists who were there to follow the trail of Count Dracula, who was a real person back in the late 14th century, early 15th century.

And there's a castle there, which looks like something out of Disney World.

I wonder if Disney World actually copied the design.

The only problem with this castle is the "original" Dracula never went there.

So if you do go to Romania, don't be taken in by the Dracula castle, because it had absolutely nothing to do with Dracula.

Now we're going to add the butter, and this is soft butter; this is not cold butter.

One at a time.

So, let's just take a look at this.

This does not look anything like a bread dough, right?

And we're gonna let this rise for about an hour and a half in this bowl.

So the dough has been resting about an hour, And that's about the time you should start on the other two parts of this dessert.

The first is really simple-- crème fraîche, a little sugar, salt, egg yolks, and all I gotta do is whisk them together.

Now we're going to cook, I guess you'd call it a pudding.

We have milk, sugar-- little less than a cup-- salt.

This is going to be thickened with semolina flour.

It's made from durum wheat.

It's a very hard wheat.

The difference is that the kernel of hard wheat is harder, actually, than a kernel of soft wheat.

So a soft wheat, you get a softer flour, like a cake flour.

It has lower gluten, lower protein content.

Hard wheat obviously has more.

So we're going to cook this for two or three minutes.

It's going to simmer and we're going to cook it.

It's going to thicken, kind of like a pudding.

And then it's going to start to stick a little bit to the bottom of the saucepan.

A little vanilla.

We didn't want to put that in earlier because we want all the flavor, and lemon again.

The woman who showed this recipe to me, she had this amazing garden full of gnomes and leprechauns and all sorts of flowers.

It was kind of cool.

And she cooked sort of under an arbor outside.

I don't think I've ever been anywhere where it sort of feels like you are back in the 15th century.

So now the dough's risen, hour and a half.

we're gonna take it out, put it in the prepared pan-- clean hands.

Smush it to the edges, just using my hands, and then we'll let it sit another 30 minutes.

Okay, time to beat some egg whites.

Now here's the conundrum with egg whites.

This is a pretty thick... you'd say pudding, right?

If you beat the egg whites stiffly and try to fold them in, you're just gonna beat up on the egg whites and you're going to get rid of all that lift.

So what you really want to do is to beat the egg whites to very soft, barely peaks.

(whirring) I see recipes that beat egg whites for desserts without adding anything acidic or any sugar.

Sugar will stabilize the foam.

It'll make it much easier not to get destroyed.

So even if a recipe does not call for adding sugar, take a couple tablespoons of sugar from the rest of the recipe and put it in with the egg whites.

(whirring slows) Sometimes I like to finish beating egg whites by hand-- that is picking this up.

The problem is these are so powerful that literally, in seconds, you can go too far.

Now, that looks-- I know, you're going to say, "Hey, that guy on television's under-beating his egg whites."

(chuckling): I've spent time with pastry chefs who have pounded this into me, that that is actually fine.

We're going to take a third, a third, and a third.

I think this is the thickest batter I've ever folded egg whites into.

But this ain't no souffle.

So, layer two.

I'm going to spread it out a little bit, because I'm gonna have to do it with an offset spatula.

Now we have the crème fraîche topping, and that just gets poured on.

Now, this is one of these recipes where, like, you get everything perfect, you have three layers, you're so proud of yourself, and then you trip and it spills on the floor, so I'll be very careful to get this in the oven.

400 degrees, about 35 minutes.

So here we go-- carefully.

So I took it out of the oven, put the pan on a cooling rack for 30 minutes, and then took lichiu out of the pan, using the parchment paper, and let that sit until it's cool-- well, I'd say warm, 'cause that's when I really like to eat it.

So when I had it in Romania, you know, at first I was going like, "that's a lot of work for just this, you know, like, lemon bar thing."

But it's just an amazing recipe.

It was so good, by the way, that when my back was turned, Irina Georgescu ate about six pieces when I wasn't looking.

So, it is phenomenal.

Wow.

You know, something I love about Romanian baking is it's not too sweet.

And they use a lot of fermented foods in Romania, or cultured foods, like crème fraîche.

Mm.

Stupendous, lovely, delicious.

Three very distinctive flavors, some good texture in there.

And it's one of the great recipes in the world you've never heard of.

So I would absolutely rush to do this.

Nobody else in your family will have ever tasted this before, and it will become a favorite.

♪ ♪ - Irina also introduced us to placinta cu mere, which is a slab pie bar.

We love this unique take on apple pie.

It's shredded apple in between two layers of a tender crust.

It's a very, very simple dough.

So, I've got some flour, a little bit of salt.

And this is a little unusual-- we're using a little bit of baking powder-- that adds a little bit of tenderness-- and a little bit of sugar.

And to that I'm gonna add our butter.

I'm gonna process that until it's like coarse sand with a few pebbly bits.

(grinding) And then to that we're gonna add our sour cream, but I'm going to add a couple of tablespoons of ice water to that, and that will bring it all together.

So add that.

Okay, just process that a few times.

(processor churning) Well, that looks pretty good.

Okay, I'm just going to put that on the counter... knead it a few times to bring it together.

It's such a soft dough with that sour cream.

The sour cream really kind of adds a little bit of richness and enhances the dough a little bit.

It's a really popular ingredient in Romania, and that's why we decided to add it.

I'm gonna cut this in half, because we need a bottom and a top crust.

So, I've got my discs.

Wrap those, put them in the fridge for an hour, and then I'll get my apple filling ready.

So for our apple filling, we're going to use a mix of tart and sweet apples.

And this is a little bit unusual-- we are actually grating the apples.

So, all you do is grate one quarter of the apple down to the core, and then you just flip the apple.

But it's actually pretty easy.

So there you go.

You have your core, and then I just take the apples and put them into a bowl.

You can grate directly into the bowl.

I have a hard time doing it, so I like to do it on a flat surface.

So a plate works great for me.

But if you can do it right over the bowl, have at it.

So then what we're going to do is add some sugar and a tablespoon of lemon juice.

That kind of keeps the apples from turning brown.

And then I'm just gonna coat these with the sugar and the lemon and let this sit while we prepare our dough.

So now we're going to roll out our two halves of dough.

This dough is so soft and easy to roll.

First I'm going to roll the top piece, and I'm going to refrigerate that while I get the apples and my bottom piece of dough ready.

You can always use the pan as a guide.

Yep, that looks like a little bit bigger than a nine-inch.

So, you can put it on a sheet pan or just on a large plate, and just put that in the refrigerator while you prepare everything else.

So, I'm gonna do the bottom of our crust right now, Don't be afraid to use a little flour if it sticks a little.

So I'm using a springform pan that I have sprayed with a little bit of baking spray, and I'm just going to put this on the bottom of the pan.

And using my fingers, I'm just going to press it evenly around the bottom.

And if there's any places where you have a gap, you just pull a little piece and patch it up.

That just definitely makes it a little easier than an apple pie.

So the apples have been sitting... oh, I don't know, maybe ten minutes or so.

And look at how much liquid has come out of those apples.

I remember the first time I made this, I couldn't believe it.

So, we really want to squeeze all that liquid out, because we don't want the bottom of our crust to be soggy.

This liquid, if you want to, you can cook it down and make a really nice syrup for a cocktail, or I actually cooked it down one time, and it actually made a beautiful caramel.

And to this, I'm going to add some more sugar and cinnamon and a little bit of salt.

I'm gonna sprinkle them over my apples, and I'm going to use my hands to get that sugar and cinnamon in there, but also to kind of break it up a little bit, so I can sprinkle it on top of our crust.

The last ingredient I'm going to use are some finely chopped walnuts.

Walnuts are also a really important ingredient in Romania.

Irina says they are kind of like pistachios are to Middle Eastern cuisine.

And they're delicious in this little apple tart.

So, now I'm going to take the apples and evenly distribute them on top of the walnuts.

So we have our apples in an even layer.

Okay, so I have the top crust.

I'm just going to lay it on top of the apples.

If it's a little too large, I just like to fold it down around the apples.

And once our crust is in place, I'm going to use a wooden skewer and poke holes about one inch apart all over the top of this.

We wanna keep that crust nice and crisp.

And poking holes is going to let some of the steam come out from the apple so it doesn't get soggy on top.

I'm going to reuse our baking sheet, just in case some of the butter leaks out of the springform pan.

Bake it at 375 degrees on the bottom third of the oven until the top of it is a nice golden brown.

So I let this cool completely in the springform pan.

I'm going to run a knife around the edge just to make sure nothing's stuck.

This is often made in a square pan so that it can be cut into bars.

We really liked it in a round pan, to make it a little bit more of something you could serve as a dessert.

I like to sprinkle it with a little bit of powdered sugar.

There, you can see that beautiful layer of apples.

It's sandwiched in between that nice, tender crust.

You can serve it with a little whipped cream.

You can just eat it plain.

I like it with some ice cream, so that's what we're going to have today.

The combination of the sweet and the tart apple is delicious.

And then you've got that little bit of walnut at the bottom.

The crust is so tender with that sour cream.

So if you love apple pie, but you're looking for something a little more casual, Romanian apple pie with cinnamon and walnuts is the pie for you.

♪ ♪ - This beautifully rustic Romanian cake is flavored with vanilla, lemon, and then topped with a billowy cloud of meringue that becomes golden brown in the oven.

When Chris had this cake at HOF Harman, the homestead of Corina and Ioana in Transylvania, they made it with rhubarb, because the region is known for its rhubarb.

But the region also grows apples, plums, and cherries, so we opted for cherries, since rhubarb is so seasonal.

So, the first thing we're going to do is add a little sugar to the cherries so that the sugar can extract the excess juice, which prevents the cake from becoming a little too soggy.

The next thing to consider is the cake pan.

Because it's topped with meringue, we're not going to invert that gorgeous cake.

So you want to make sure to use a springform cake pan.

You can see this is a light-colored aluminum pan.

We'll set our oven for 350 degrees for this color pan.

However, keep in mind that if your pan is dark colored, like many nonstick pans are, you want to set the oven temperature at 325, just a little bit lower, because the dark pans conduct heat more intensely.

We'll get the dry ingredients going together first.

We'll mix the melted butter and the milk together, and then we'll move on to the eggs.

The aeration of this batter comes from the mixture of eggs and sugar.

There's one whole egg, and there are three extra yolks.

So, four yolks give the cake a lot of richness, and then that egg white allows the aeration to lighten the batter.

We'll get this started on sort of a low speed.

We're going to add the sugar, let that blend together.

(whirring) Okay.

And then I'm going to zest in a little bit of lemon, and we'll turn this up to medium high and let it whip for about three to four minutes.

And this aeration comes in, and it lightens the whole thing, and it's quite beautiful.

(whirring) Ah, look at that.

Look how much lighter that is.

Okay, I've got the milk and the butter combined in the measuring cup; it makes it easier to pour, and I've added the vanilla to that.

This is where the richness and flavor comes from in this cake.

You can see the color of the yolk mixture remains very light.

I'm going to add this in about three or four additions so it gradually gets incorporated.

Okay.

(whirring stops) And then I'll mix the rest of it by hand.

Oh, these cherries look great.

A lot of juice has dripped off from them.

Going to transfer the batter to our prepared pan, and then just sprinkle the cherries over the top.

It doesn't really matter.

Believe me, you think it matters, but as this bakes, the cake batter rises up and over the cherries, and they end up going wherever the heck they want to anyways.

Now, this will go into our preheated oven at 350.

Bake for about 45 to 50 minutes, and then we will make the meringue for the topping.

Our meringue is all measured out, ready to go.

But don't start the meringue till the cake has come out of the oven.

So we'll just leave it here for a couple minutes while we make the meringue.

The cake cools a little bit, and that's totally fine.

We have the egg whites from those yolks we had in the batter, plus a fourth egg white.

We have pinch of salt.

The salt really isn't for flavor in meringue.

It's just to help loosen the proteins in the egg whites so that they can get more lift on them as they whip.

And now, not every meringue has this, but it really helps to put a little bit of an acidic component in egg whites.

Acid helps emulsify the egg with the sugar.

It prevents it from separating and becoming grainy as long as you don't overwhip it.

We're using lemon juice here, but you could also use a little bit of cream of tartar.

Turn this on... and as soon as this gets a nice foamy topping on it.

We'll start adding the sugar.

As the meringue aerates, you want to keep an eye on it.

You want it to be sort of a soft peak.

Soft to medium is okay.

You don't want it to over whip, because then it starts to break apart and curdle.

How long that takes?

Well, it kind of depends on how cold your egg whites are.

The more room temperature they are, the faster the meringue will whip and aerate.

The colder they are, the longer it takes.

(mixer slows) Okay, time to check the meringue.

You can see how much whiter it is-- the more air it gets into it, the lighter it becomes.

Okay, there we go-- actually, that's a little on the soft side, which is fine.

I'm going to take this off, and I'll just do a few whisks by hand.

Okay.

This is what I would call a soft peak, sort of on the verge of medium soft.

It's got a little bit of wiggle to it still, but it holds itself up no matter what angle you're holding it in.

Now, the cake just came out of the oven, so the center of the cake is its most delicate area.

Don't plop all the meringue right into the middle.

Instead, plop blobs of it around the border, and then we can spread it gently over the whole top of the cake.

Oh, this looks gorgeous.

A good meringue is going to have a little bit of shine on it.

If you overwhip it, it will become grainy, and you'll know it right away.

And there's no solution for overwhipped meringue, you just have to start from the beginning.

All right, you're going to spread the meringue over the top of the cake.

Once you've got it evenly distributed more or less, then start on the swirls and valleys, which is what makes this cake so incredibly gorgeous.

Ooh!

I think I'll stop now.

(chuckling): This is very tempting to keep going.

All right, we left the oven on when we took the cake out.

It's still at 350.

We'll put this back into the oven for about 20, 25 minutes, until the top of that meringue becomes a golden brown, just on the peaks, and the valleys are still kind of white.

But once the meringue's in the oven, keep an eye on it.

Start checking after 15 minutes or so, every oven's a little bit different.

And because of the sugar content in the meringue, it does tend to brown pretty quickly once it starts.

Whew!

This came out of the oven about 30 minutes ago.

It's like the magic effect, when you have meringue that gets brown on top like this and all those swirls and valleys show up as white.

It's so stunning.

So after sitting for 30 minutes, you want to loosen the edges before you unmold the cake pan.

Just lift it up over the sides of the cake.

You haven't disrupted the meringue; there's nothing messy there.

Now you can see why it really doesn't matter how those cherries go on top.

The beauty of those cherries show up when you slice the cake.

Whew!

Lofty meringue on top, delicate, buttery-flavored crumb cake on the bottom.

And those tart cherries in there, bringing their little bits of brightness, are just fantastic cake.

Okay, if you like cake, you do want this recipe, And you can get this recipe and all the recipes from this season of Milk Street at MilkStreetTV.com.

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