Recipe of the week: Rákóczi cottage cheese cake

The Rákóczi cottage cheese cake (Rákóczi túrós) brought the Hungarian pies to a whole new level. What made it so special back in the day is that the cottage cheese layer was covered with meringue instead of pastry. The dessert instantly became popular and still remains one of Hungary’s specialties.

The name can be deceiving, because it was not named after the famous monarch Ferenc Rákóczi II, but a confectioner named János Rákóczi. He was a unique master chef who worked all around Europe’s best restaurants. His dessert debuted in 1958 at the world exhibition is Brussels.

According to mindmegette.hu, the confectioner was the manager of hotel restaurants, he published cookbooks and won several awards at gastronomic exhibitions. He published his all-around cookbook titled Hungarian gastronomy in 1964, which features the famous cake. But the cake was actually created a few decades before, the recipe appeared in a gastronomic journal in 1937 for the first time. It was presented to the audience at the 1958 world exhibition in Brussels.

The Rákóczi cottage cheese cake is made from easy components. Its base is a shortbread-like pastry, which is covered with a cottage cheese cream flavoured with lemon zest, vanilla and raisins. Then comes the innovative part, the soft sugary merengue. Finally, the apricot jam pulls everything together.

Besides the classic cake, you can also make the dessert in the form of a muffin, tarte, galette or even serve it as a mousse in a cup. When trying out new varieties, pay attention to the ratios, because all components have their roles 😉

Ingredients:

For the pastry

• 300 grams of flour
• 150 grams of butter
• 1 teaspoon of baking powder
• 100 grams of sugar
• 2 egg yolks
• 1 dl of sour cream
• pinch of salt

For the cream

• 500 grams of cottage cheese
• 1 dl of sour cream
• the zest of one lemon
• 2 handfuls of raisins
• 150 grams of sugar
• 30 grams of wheatmeal
• 2 egg yolks

For the topping

• 4 egg whites
• 200 grams of sugar
• apricot jam

Directions:

Mix the ingredients of the pastry together with your hands, roll it out and put it onto your baking tray. Prebake it for 12-14 minutes. For the cream, mix the egg yolks with the sugar until the mixture whitens, then add the cottage cheese, sour cream, raisins, lemon zest and wehatmeal, and combine well. Add the cream onto the prebaked pastry, put it back into the oven and bake for 25 more minutes at 180° Celsius.

For the merengue topping, start with whipping the egg whites, then slowly add the sugar so that it becomes a stiff mousse. Put it into a piping bag and draw bars on top of the cream. Bake it for 20 minutes and lower the temperature to 130° Celsius so that the heat slowly dries out the merengue. After you take it out of the oven, fill in the gaps between the bars with apricot jam. Let the dessert cool down and serve it.

Enjoy!

Featured image: www.facebook.com/Rákóczitúrós

Ce: bm

Source: Daily News Hungary