Karpatka (Carpathian Mountain Cake)

Preparation of the Cream

Ingredients

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1 pkg 240g	Karpatka cream mix (dr. Oetker)
0.5 L	Milk
200 g (7 oz.)	Butter

Recipe:

1. Mix the content of the package with half of the milk.
2. Bring the other half of the milk to boil.
3. Take the boiling milk off the burner and pour into it the other half of the milk with the cream mix and mix well.
4. Put back the mixture on low heat and keep boiling with constant stirring. Make sure there are no lumps.
5. Once the mix has thickened (about 3 minutes), transfer it into a mixer bowl, cover with plastic wrap, and let it cool to room temperature.
6. Once cold, start mixing it at high to break it up, then at slow, add 200 g of soft butter. Continue mixing until well combined.
7. Put the cream in a fridge until ready to assemble the cake.

Preparation of the Choux Pastry

Ingredients

200 g (7 oz,)	All purpose flour.
250 mL	Water.
125 g	Butter.
5 ea	Eggs.
1 tsp (5 mL)	Baking powder

Directions

1. Boil 250 mL water with butter added,
2. Into boiling water add 200g of all purpose flour and mix thoroughly.
3. Continue cooking on low heat until the dough becomes somewhat translucent and forms a ball.  The recipe calls for 1 minute, but I usually extend this time a bit.
4. Transfer the dough into a mixer bowl, cover with plastic foil to prevent drying, and allow to cool.
5. Preheat the oven to 220°C (425°F).
6. Mixing with a flat beater at low speed, add one by one 5 eggs, mixing until each is well combined.
7. Add 1 tsp of baking powder. I usually do that before adding the last egg.
8. Distribute the dough into two greased baking 23 cm x 33 cm (9“x13”) pans¹ and spread it thinly.
9. Bake them initially for 10 minutes, then without opening the oven, lower the temperature
   to 170°C (335°F), and continue baking for 10-15 minutes².
10. Let the pastry cool before assembling the cake.
11. Use the flatter sheet³ of the choux dough as a bottom layer of the cake, spread the cream over it and use the more mountainous sheet as the top,
12. Sprinkle icing sugar over the top. Convenient way to do this is to use a small fine sieve, or a powder sugar shaker.

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Footnotes

1. This size gives a relatively thin sheet of the choux pastry. It is possible to spread it to slightly larger or slightly smaller baking sheets, depending on your preference. ↩︎
2. If two baking sheets do not fit in your oven at the same time (ovens in Poland tend to be smaller than in Canada or the USA), bake them separately, following the same temperature regime. You can also try to bake them at two different rack levels at the same time, but in my experience one of them will come out lighter than the other. ↩︎
3. Here is a trick I use: I grease only the bottom of one baking sheet leaving a 1 cm ungreased margin. The other baking sheet I grease the whole bottom and the low sides of the baking sheet. That way, one of the sheets of choux pastry slides easier when expanding during baking than the other. In effect one is significantly flatter. ↩︎