Recipe of the week: Six-layered / Hatlapos

Six-layered (hatlapos) has been a popular dessert in Hungary for a long time, as it costs very little to make. Because of this, it is often called ‘beggar’ cake, referring to how easy it is to prepare, even in hard-up times. 

This cake is believed to originate from Vas county, from the Western part of the country. Its name perfectly describes the dessert: it has six layers of pastry, each topped with a layer of cream filling. The cream can vary from household to household. The most popular is the chocolate filling, though a number of people make the dessert with caramel or coffee cream, or with a simple vanilla cream filling.

Recently, there has been some debate about the origins of another alternate name for this dessert: Horthy-slice, after the Hungarian admiral and statesman of the 20th century. However, this name is less well-known and is not very flattering to Horthy himself. It contains some degree of criticism, alluding to hard-up circumstances of his time when this cheap option was the most likely dessert to be made.

In Győr, in the North-Western part of the country, the six-layered recipe became rather famous because of a graffiti that appeared in the underpass of the city one day. The artwork appeared in 2013 and includes the recipe as well as a pair of kissing deer and some decorative symbols.

Even when the underpass was painted and renovated, this part was left out, preserving the artwork.

Recipe of six-layered

 

Ingredients for the pastry

500 g flour

80 g butter

100 g icing sugar

200 ml milk

1 packet rising agent

Ingredients for the cream filling

1 l milk

350 g sugar

6 tbsp flour

50 g butter

1 tsp vanilla essence

4 tbsp cocoa powder

Ingredients for the top

50 g butter

some icing sugar

Preparation

Crumble the butter together with the flour, then add the icing sugar, the rising agent and the milk. Bring the mixture together with your hands to form a smooth ball of dough. Separate the ball into six equal pieces and roll them out to fit a 30×33 cm baking tin. Bake them one by one for about 7-9 minutes with the oven on 190 degrees. Make sure to poke some holes with a fork to create some steam holes.

After the layers of pastry are ready, start making the filling. In a bowl, mix together the sugar, the vanilla essence, the flour and the cocoa powder with 200 ml of the milk. Start to boil the rest of the milk. Once it is warm, add the cocoa-y mixture and stir until it is nice and thick. Then, off from the stove but while it is still hot, add in the butter. Let it cool a bit, then spread the warmish cream on top of each layer (except the top one).

Let it rest for a while so that it sets (up to 3-4 hours), then glaze the top layer with the melted butter. Once it is set, sprinkle it with some icing sugar. Now the only thing left to do is enjoy!

A pro tip is that this dessert gets better and better with time. So, unlike many other desserts, this one gets tastier and more delicious a few days after it has been prepared, when the cream filling has started to seep into the pastry. Therefore, it is a perfect summer dessert – you do not have to eat it as soon as it is out of the oven.

For more summer treats, check out the recipe for sour cherry soup!

Featured image: facebook.com/sussunkfozzunk/photos

Source: e-nyelvmagazin.hu, m.nyest.hu, receptneked.hu