About this site
Pastries from the Past is an independent publication launched in January 2023 by Judith Gurfinkel about baking, inspired by the recipe notebook inherited from her grandmother.
Pastries from the Past will share recipes, and share the experience of testing and adapting the recipes to their current format.
Judith
Her grandmother collected recipes from 1905 to 1960, during this time she accumulated 300+ recipes of various pastries, cakes and tarts, reflecting the delightful Austrian and Hungarian confectionery traditions.
The discovery of the recipe notebook and the delicious cakes and desserts describe in it launched a year-long project to translate, adapt and bake some of the recipes and resulted in a book with a selection of the most delicious, quintessential Hungarian and Austrian confectionery recipes.
The book version of Pastries from the Past has 40 recipes of cakes, sweet and savory baked goods and desserts selected from the yellowing, 80-page notebook her grandmother kept throughout her life. The book is about the art of baking as it was practiced by a dedicated housewife in the early 20th century, at the height of the Austro-Hungarian Empire until WWI, in Budapest between the wars, and the years after WWII under the communist regime in Hungary.
Judith
The book is available in bookstores and online: https://a.co/d/g0XTCo7/
The recipe notebook has many pastry recipes not included in the book. It did not include all the laminated dough recipes, doughnuts and a variety of desserts made with quark (topfen) – in this blog the intent is to explore those recipes and share the results. Also, to include comments and improvement suggestions from friends and members as they try the recipes.
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About the author
Judith Gurfinkel is a Hungarian-born enthusiastic baker who embarked on a project of reviving old Austro-Hungarian pastry recipes, triggered by family inheritance. She launched Pastries from the Past as a book to bring new life into the hundred-year-old recipes. While writing the book she translated the German and Hungarian texts, converted them to current units of measures and ingredients, tried them out by baking and tasting and documenting step-by-step instructions and finally, photographing the process and the results.
She lives in Vancouver Canada and frequently prepares delicious cakes for her family and friends.
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