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Poland: Kremowka Papieska / "Papal" Cream Cake

It was apparently in 1999 during a visit to his old home town Wadowice that the then-Pope John Paul II mentioned casually that he was very fond of the cream cake or kremówka that he and his friends in school used to pool their funds to buy from one of the bakers in the town's market square. More or less inevitably, the next day the entire town was coming down with kremówka, suddenly rebranded as Kremówka papieska, the "Papal Cream Cake."

As cakes go, kremówka is a fairly simple thing. It's the kind of sheet cake that gets made in big flats and sold by the square piece -- which is why the boy-who-would-be-Pope and his friends could afford it. Another reason it might have been inexpensive is because it looks like what a baker might have been inclined to make at the end of his or her baking day (around noon) to use up ingredients he or she had made too much of and wanted to get rid of before closing time. (Though it should also be mentioned that at least one Polish source says that kremówka also contains a local brandy called winiak, which it seems might jack up the price a little... and make the cake that much more attractive for officially-under-the-drinking-age kids.)

The recipe is simple: it calls for sheets of puff pastry on top and bottom -- or in the less formal versions of the cake, just on the top: the bottom would be regular short-crust pastry, another factor that makes this look like one of those use-it-up, don't-waste-the-leftover-eggs confections. Some versions of kremówka don't use puff pastry at all, just a short-crust pastry on both top and bottom, enriched with egg yolks (probably the whites got used elsewhere in the bakery for meringues).

The cream of the interior isn't whipped cream: it's a golden custard cream similar to créme patissiere or pastry cream -- very rich and yummy, and another commodity that a good central European baker will probably have left over at the end of the day. The thriftiness of this confection, though, in no way detracts from its tastiness.

Click "read more" for the recipe.

Ireland: Carrageen Moss Blancmange

Carrageen moss is one of Ireland's more unusual natural resources. First of all, it's not a moss: it's a seaweed. And to add to the confusion, there are any number of ways to spell its common name: carrageen, carrageenan, carragheen and carragheenan, take your pick. They're all derived from the Irish word carraigín, which means "moss of the rocks" (though some think that the -ín ending is actually an Irish diminutive, which changes the word's meaning to "little rock" and connects it to a relatively common Irish place name).

At any rate, the scientific name of the Irish version of the seaweed is Chondrus crispus. This reddish-brown plant grows on or near just about every Irish coastline. It has been used for centuries as a food additive. Local people would gather and dry it -- usually in the sun: this treatment bleaches it. When someone wanted to use it in a dessert (which might be a long time later, as dried carrageen lasts just about forever), all that had to be done was to soak the dried seaweed in warm milk or water, depending on the recipe. The seaweed then releases a delicate natural gel that acts as a setting agent when the dessert mixture cools.

These days, carrageenan's main worldwide use is as a thickening agent in all kinds of commercial food preparations (shakes, ready made desserts, and so forth). But it's still used in various Irish traditional dessert dishes, especially when the cook wants a more authentic effect than gelatine would produce. Probably its commonest use is in that ancient and traditional dessert, the blancmange -- a light, molded sweet pudding. In blancmange, which must have a light and subtle taste to work correctly, the carrageenan adds a hint of the sea -- a delicate flavor hard to identify but very habit-forming once you've experienced it.

Carrageenan can usually be found in health food stores, and can often also turn up in gourmet specialty stores. Click "read more" for the blancmange recipe.

(Looking for still more traditional Irish desserts? Click here!)

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