The next confectionary craze is on its way. Get yours from Cadar Chimney Cakes
Ever since Bake Off first breezed onto the Beeb (and latterly Channel 4), we’ve thought ourselves relatively au fait with everything from profiteroles to pflaumenkuchen. Eating out has expanded our culinary horizons and our waistlines but chimney cakes are a new one on us.
These Hungarian delicacies deserve to be better known so we’re doing our bit, spreading the word and spreading the love.
Although they may be the ultimate sweet summer snack, their origins are posh. Called 'kürtöskalác' in Hungary or Romania and a 'trdelník' in Czech, a chimney cake is a festive pastry that was originally served at weddings, baptisms or to honour special guests. You’re all Confidential readers so that makes you pretty special and therefore worthy of a chimney cake in our eyes.
These culinary delights don’t just pop up everywhere. You have to know how to make them properly. Liviu Cadar is the guardian of tradition at Cadar Chimney Cakes in Bolton Market Place, the only chimney cake café in Greater Manchester and, quite possibly, the whole of the North West. A quick internet search seems to confirm it.
A chimney cake is made from strips of handmade dough which are wrapped around a wooden cylinder and baked in a specialised rotisserie oven. The surface of the dough becomes golden brown and the sugar caramelizes, providing a sweet crunch on the outside whilst leaving a light fluffy dough on the inside.
When it comes out of the oven, steam cascades from the top of the spiral, just like a smoking chimney. Cute.
Liviu Cadar has worked in high-end hotels around the world but his fondness for the chimney cakes of his childhood meant that he decided that chimney cakes weren’t just his past, they were his future. Now he’s opened dessert café Cadar Chimney Cakes in Bolton Market Place, happily they can be part of our future too.
Although tradition and memory are important to Liviu Cadar, whose recipe is over 100 years old, the chimney cakes you’ll find at Bolton Market Place are very much for the Instagram generation.
Same sweet crisp crunch as traditional chimney cakes, same soft doughy centre, but now the curly-wurly pastry sensation is wrapped around generous helpings of soft serve ice cream and all manner of decadent toppings from Biscoff sauce to peanut butter to Ferrero Rocher dusted with gold. Ker-bling!
When you see these OTT towers of summer sweetness you simply can’t resist getting snap happy. After all, everyone’s feed is full of the latest food fads but chimney cakes? That’s pretty unique.
