On my recent trip to Vienna I got to experience what the Christmas capital of Europe (and maybe the world) had to offer. The holiday is a big deal in Vienna and everything is focused around dozens of holiday markets spread all over the city. Well as you can imagine these markets are full of sweet treats and Christmas surprises. For the next few days I'm going to highlight these sweet treats and maybe even convince you to make your way to Vienna next year for Christmas.
Baked goods are probably the most popular non-alcoholic non-sausage food you'll find in the Christmas markets of Vienna. Everything from cookies, to breads, to donuts are available. I imagine (because I don't live here) that some of these treats are made only for this time of year. I know that most of these treats taste as good as they look
One of the most fascinating baked treat available at most of the markets is a cake like treat called Baumkuchen. I've encountered Baumkuchen, in Japan, but here at the Vienna Christmas markets it's a totally different type of baked treat. The Baumkuchen in japan is a round cake made up of many thin layers of cake wrapped around a pole and cooked in on a spit.
The Baumkuchen in Vienna doesn't seem to be made up of as many layers and is more like a twisted rolled out dough that is wrapped around a wider spit. It's like a cinamon bun only instead of being wrapped up on itself, it's thiner and wrapped around a pole. It also is generally served in a similar way to cinamon buns with icing, cinamon and sometimes, flavours like chocolate and vanilla.
One of the most common baked treat I found at the markets was these round cakes that apear to be filled with meringue. Meringue, is a really common ingredient in many of the treats found in the Vienna markets. These cakes came in a huge assortment of sizes as well, from these small ones that are no more than an inch and a half tall...
To these enormous ones that are more than 6 inches tall and two feet long. I wonder if I could eat a whole one of these in one sitting.
I came across one cookie vendor that turned the art of icing cookies, into a fine art. The amount of detail in this decoration is like nothing I've ever seen before in my whole life.
Although they're fairly expensive, for cookies, for a piece of art I think it's really reasonable. I guess the only problem is, as a piece of art it will only last so long. Either it'll go bad, or you'll get so hungry looking at it and you'll gobble it up.
One of the most comon cookies found at the Vienna Christmas Markets is the gingerbread cookie. A common way to present them is in a heart shape, with a string through it. The idea is to give it as a gift to a love interest and she'll wear it around her neck. The message on this one made me chuckle a bit, I wonder what it means in English?
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