Every family has a dish or dessert that holds a special meaning to them. For mine, apfelstrudel takes center stage at every celebration, big or small. It’s a traditional Austrian pastry filled with tart, juicy apples, plump raisins and toasted walnuts, and you can spot it in the window of many bakeries and coffee shops. 

Apfelstrudel is served by the slice, either warm out of the oven, at room temperature or it can even be enjoyed cold. You can order it drizzled with vanilla sauce, a scoop of ice cream or a dollop of whipped cream. Every bite offers a heavenly combination of sweet baked fruit and buttery bites of flaky pastry that fall apart in your mouth. Whenever we visited Austria as a family, apfelstrudel was the first dessert my parents would order for us during the leisurely jause (snack hour), which occurs midafternoon and was always accompanied by a frothy melange (a coffee drink).

My mother, a native Austrian, grew up enjoying this dessert. Her grandmother, mother and aunts would take turns making it, using apples plucked straight from the family’s tree growing in the backyard. To this day, it is still my mother’s favorite dessert and one she requests on her birthday over cake. Meanwhile, my father, originally from Iran, was first introduced to the dish after moving to Austria for college. He was in search of a pick-me-up during study breaks, and decided to order it one day after routinely noticing others enjoying it. And it became the dish my parents shared on their first date at Café Schwarzenberg in downtown Vienna nearly 40 years ago.

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