I can’t believe that it was two years ago this month that I visited Austria! All the snow we’ve been having is making me miss the cozy Alpine town of Maria Alm, Austria (I may have been stalking the webcam of the nearby ski trails a little bit!). It doesn’t look like travel will be safe for quite a while longer, but once it is I definitely plan to visit Vienna, one of my favorite cities in the world, again. Until then, I decided to see if I could bring a little taste of Austria into my own home. ❤
I’ve long been fascinated by Austria in general and Vienna in particular. Eva Ibbotson, one of my favorite authors, set a few of her stories there. In one of them, a traditional Austrian cake called gugelhupf is mentioned, so I knew I had to look for it while I was in the country!
I ended up finding gugelhupf at Café Restaurant Residenz, a beautiful restaurant near the ticket gate at Schönbrunn Palace in Vienna. I had a delicious meal of goulash and spätzle with homemade lemonade, followed by a wonderful slice of marble gugelhupf, before we toured the palace and its expansive gardens.
I’d been wanting to try my hand at making gugelhupf for a while now, and decided that this month–two years after my trip, when I’m missing travel and have been watching way too much GBBO–was a great time to try it. I found recipes for gugelhupf and marmorgugelhupf (the marbled variety I had in Vienna, and that I decided to bake) at the Strudel & Schnitzel: a Taste of Austria blog. The original recipes have some great tips, so be sure to check them out. They’re linked here:
The recipes I found used European measurements for ingredients, so I had to convert some of them to American measurements. I also substituted milk for water from the original recipe. Here are the ingredients I used:
- 4 eggs
- 1 cup white sugar
- 1 pinch salt
- 2 tsp baking vanilla
- dash lemon juice
- 1/2 cup oil
- 1/2 cup milk
- 2 tsp baking powder
- 2 cups flour
- 2 tbsp cocoa powder
- powdered sugar
I pretty much followed the directions from the original blog post, and took some pictures along the way, which you can see above! Here’s what I did:
- Preheat oven to 350°F. Use the convection setting if you have it.
- Stir together eggs, sugar, salt, vanilla, and lemon juice until frothy. Then mix in a little of the oil and a little of the milk at a time, alternating between the two.
- Sift the baking powder into the flour, then fold both into liquid ingredients.
- Grease and flour a Bundt pan, then pour in most of the batter. Mix cocoa into the remaining mixture.
- Pour cocoa mixture into the pan and use a spoon or skewer to swirl together to create the marble effect.
- Bake for about 60 minutes, or until cake tester comes out clean.
- Cool, then tip cake out of pan and dust with powdered sugar.
Here are a few pictures of the completed cake!
The cake turned out quite well (thanks, Schnitzel and Strudel!) and I really enjoyed the familiar taste and texture. I will note that the recipe seemed to be for a smaller size of Bundt pan than mine, so I might try to double or 1.5x it the next time I make it. I also wasn’t quite sure if my baking powder conversion was quite right–I might try it with a little more in the future. It is also not as sweet as most American desserts, so you might want to add a little more sugar or consider adding a glaze if that’s what you like!
It was an excellent cake, with distinct vanilla and cocoa flavors and a dense texture. It went quite well with a glass of milk, or you could try it Vienna-style, with a large swirl of whipped cream! 🙂
I really enjoyed making gugelhupf, and I think I’ll try my hand at recreating a few more of the best meals or desserts I’ve eaten on my travels this year! Someday, hopefully not too far in the future, I’ll be back in Vienna, having another delicious marmorgugelhupf. ❤
Have you eaten gugelhupf before, or have you ever tried to recreate a dish from one of your travels? Do you know where you’ll be traveling when the pandemic ends and it’s safe to go again? Share in the comments below!