Emperor’s Crumbs or császármorzsa or smarni or Kaiserschmarrn was our first recipe on this blog. I felt like revisiting it for three reasons: first, it is our name and signature recipe, so we should try it with American ingredients. Second, we are delighted to mention that we’re featured on The Hungarian Girl’s website and I don’t want to risk any mistakes! Most importantly, my mother-in-law had a birthday recently, and a decadent breakfast reminiscent of fancy Austro-Hungarian weekends was a perfect way to celebrate it. So I remade the recipe to serve 5-6 instead of the original 2. I also made it more “California compliant” and used less eggs and almost no fat, while keeping its outstanding flavor. It still tastes rich and delicious. If you want to know the background of emperor’s crumbs then check back to our first post and the old recipe.

Print recipe

Emperors Crumbs

Original recipe tripled, reduced eggs. We have been able to find semolina without any trouble here, both packaged (Bob’s Red Mill is one brand) and in the bulk bins. We love the bulk bins these days!
Ingredients

Makes 5-6 portions

• 2¼ cup/300 g semolina
• 3 cups/750 ml milk
• 2 tsp vanilla extract
• 5 eggs, separated
• pinch salt
• 1½ cups/300 g sugar
• zest from 1 lemon
• 50 g butter for sauteing
• powdered sugar, compote or jam or all three as topping

Method

• Mix together the semolina, flour and milk. Let it sit for an hour or so to let the semolina absorb the milk.
• Mix the egg yolks together with sugar and stir it into the milk mixture.
• Whip the egg whites and a pinch of salt into firm peaks and fold it into the milk/egg mixture.
• Melt the butter and add the batter. Stir the batter with a spatula or wooden spoon until it starts to form little clumps – crumbs. Depending on the size of the pan this can take up to 30 minutes.
• Serve hot with powdered sugar or with jam, or with compote or drizzle with some syrup.

This is the kind of thing you throw together when your fruit trees are producing more than you can manage, or if you’ve gone a little crazy at the farmers’ market. [Read more →]

Given the contents of this blog, it might surprise you to learn that in fact we try to eat sensibly during the week and reserve our most decadent dining for the weekends. This recipe definitely falls into the category of indulgence. When I was living in New York, I discovered chocolate babka at Zabar’s, which is pretty much the Platonic ideal of bread + chocolate. Or at least my ideal. While it most definitely originates in Central Europe, I haven’t seen babka in a bakery there (the fact that there aren’t many Jewish people left to bake it being the obvious reason). We have tried a variety of similar things with different names, all good but not quite babka.

[Read more →]

We’re recruiting for the Emperor’s Crumbs Army on facebook. Don’t worry, this isn’t the draft; it’s a place to exchange recipes, photos, suggestions and more. We’re even offering an incentive! Anyone who becomes a member of the group Emperors Crumbs Army will be entered to win a selection of  classic Czecho-Slovak treats.

The winner will enjoy crisp wafers with various fillings, the weird and wonderful “soy stick”, unforgettable “Romanca”, indulgent chocolate “Fidorka” and more. You can bet we’ll be stocking up on these delicacies ourselves when we pack our bags for the big move to the US next month. So raise your butter-knife high and join up! The winner will be selected on March 12th, 2010.

The second competition is a bit more involved but it is worth every effort. Try one of our recipes and make a photo or a video. Post it on any photo/video hosting site like flickr, smugmug, YouTube, or vimeo, add the tag emperorscrumbs.com, and in the description of the photo put a link to the recipe. You can enter as many photos/videos as you want, just link to your creations in a comment here so we know where to find them.  We will pick the best submission by March 19th. Along with the amazing and nutritious prize of a fabulous assortment of the best candies and wafers from Slovakia and Hungary, you and your artwork will enter history when we publish it here for everyone to admire!

It was an ordinary afternoon when I was picking up my son from his grandparents’ house last week. Usually I have coffee with my parents and discuss the joys and sorrows of life. My dad loves antiques and he is crazy about history, and I love to task him with finding me different items from the past. We were talking about antique cookbooks and I was complaining how expensive they are. He showed me few of his cookbooks which date back to the 1800s, explaining who used this or that book, or where and when he bought it. A few times he mentioned his great-aunt who was a housewife and cook in Budapest. She worked also for Kalman Mikszath, who was a famous Hungarian writer, journalist and politician. Then he pulled out a big pile of handwritten recipes, saying: “these are her recipes”. My jaw dropped. Who cares about the old books of unknown people when we have recipes directly from our family? My dad is like that. [Read more →]