Cone-shaped sweet pastry rolled around a wooden spit and baked over charcoal, rolled in sugar and cinnamon and served warm or filled with cream and ice cream.

Trdelnik traces to the Transylvanian Hungarian community as a wedding pastry, the name from 'trdlo' (wooden spit). It became widely popular at Bratislava and Prague tourist markets in the 1990s and has since branded itself as a Slovak chimney cake despite contested origins. The dish carries a Slovak Protected Geographic Indication application filed in the 2000s, and the canonical Skalica trdelnik recipe remains the official reference for Slovak production.

Where to eat Trdelnik in Bratislava

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Make it at home

Serves 62 hrAdvanced

Ingredients

  • 500 g plain flour
  • 200 ml warm milk
  • 100 g sugar
  • 70 g butter, melted
  • 1 egg
  • 10 g dry yeast
  • Pinch of salt
  • 100 g sugar (for rolling)
  • 1 tablespoon cinnamon
  • 100 g ground walnut

Method

  1. Activate the yeast in warm milk with a pinch of sugar.
  2. Mix flour, sugar, butter, egg, salt and the yeast milk into a soft dough.
  3. Knead 10 minutes, rest covered 60 minutes.
  4. Roll the dough into long ropes, 1 cm thick.
  5. Wrap each rope around a greased wooden or metal spit.
  6. Bake at 200C over charcoal or in the oven, turning, 8-10 minutes.
  7. Brush warm with melted butter.
  8. Mix sugar, cinnamon and walnut, roll the hot trdelnik to coat.

Editor tip. The traditional spit cooking gives the trdelnik its hollow cone shape; a thick rolling pin in the oven gets you close.

Common allergens: Gluten, Egg, Dairy.