Further to my last post about making buchty, I hope your appetite is whetted for more about Cezch cakes. As I said Czech cafes often offer a wide and wonderful selection of cakes. Indeed I had a whole lesson with my Czech language teacher learning the various names of Czech cakes, and very useful it was too. Some are clearly drawn from the Viennese style - wonderful cream and fruit jelly confections called zaluseky, which demand the use of a spoon and fork - but others more obviously Czech in their origins.
One of the most common and most popular is the honey cake – medovy dort, although often named by the dominant brand Medovnik. This is is a light honey and walnut sponge, which sometimes comes with either extra honey or cream. Strudel (both apple and cream cheese) is also common, often coming with cream. Biscuits are called susenky, whilst piskoty are the type of biscuit you use in trifles. Sometimes you will come across a cross between a meringue and a biscuit shaped like a shortbread finger which is eaten with coffee and is called a coffin (after its shape). At Christmas you will find iced gingerbread hearts, houses, devils and anything else you can think of for sale on street stalls and in shops. Whilst at Easter there are the special Easter cakes – including a sponge cooked in a lamb-shaped mould.
The Czechs have a line in dough-based confectionery, these include the buchty of course, the plaited vanilkovka, and zavin (a longer version of buchty which slices). These make an excellent sweet breakfast.
I have only scratched the surface of the wonderful world of Czech cakes, you will just have to come here and try them for yourself.
