Trdelník (Czech Chimney Cake)

Despite being sold all over Prague's old town as an "ancient Bohemian" treat, trdelník is not historically Czech. It descends from the kürtőskalács, the spit-wound chimney cake of the Hungarian Székely people of Transylvania (its earliest recipe appears in a 1784 Transylvanian household cookbook). Around the late 17th century this cake reached the town of Skalica in present-day Slovakia, where it took the name trdelník (from trdlo, the wooden spit); through the 19th century it was known as a Skalica specialty, later spreading to Czech Moravia. It only appeared on Prague's streets in the early 2000s and spread rapidly with tourism around 2006–2007. There is no old Czech tradition of eating it: after the Velvet Revolution, vendors rebranded a photogenic, portable snack as a "Czech tradition" for the tourist crowds. Compared with the Hungarian original, trdelník's main difference is that it lacks the caramel-sugar glaze. In 2007 the EU granted Protected Geographical Indication status to "Skalický trdelník."

The caramelized sugar crust crackles against soft, steamy bread that pulls apart in warm strands, with cinnamon and toasted walnut in every bite. The tube is hollow, which is why Prague stalls now shape it into a cone and fill it with ice cream. It must be eaten hot off the spit — once it cools, the crust softens and loses its crackle.

Rotating the dough on the spit cooks it evenly while the sugar coating slowly caramelizes over the coals into a crackly shell; the enriched yeast dough, full of butter and egg, stays tender and pulls apart in soft layers. Pulling out the spit leaves the hollow tube — the very feature later used to hold ice cream. Even sugar and adequate heat give the crisp-outside, soft-inside contrast; too fierce a fire chars the outside before the inside cooks.