katie’s fruit dumpling tours
Intrepid travellers who have joined our Road to Budapest and Balkan Adventure trips have remarked that they should be named ‘Katie’s Fruit Dumpling Tour of Eastern Europe’, especially when belts need to be loosened by the end of their trip. But they’re not complaining and there’s no argument from Katie Olsson, as she explains why she developed this sweet obsession…
“It’s such a simple concept – boiled dough, fruit, topped with melted butter or cream – yet it’s such a delicious, tasty treat. Eastern Europe is the home of comfort food and fruit dumplings are a great way to top off a meal of potato perogies, cabbage rolls or goulash.
Along The Road to Budapest there are some incredible places to sample these gooey morsels of heaven and every place makes them slightly different. It really would be rude not to try every one of them!
In Slovakia you can eat a plate of well-earned cherry dumplings after hiking through the beautiful Tatra Mountains. In the Jewish sector of Krakow, you can mix the sweetened berry filling with a whipped cream topping. However, my personal favourite is found in the medieval atmosphere of Cesky Krumlov. Here they make their fruit dumplings with the perfect ratio of dough to berry filling and the topping is something I have not found anywhere else – melted butter, cinnamon and crumbled cream cheese. These dumplings melt in your mouth and even after eating four of them, I still feel like I have room for more!”
Tour Europe with Intrepid on trips like these great small group adventures:
The Road to Budapest – 15 days
Balkan Adventure – 15 days
* photo by Gary Lee – Intrepid Photography Competition
I was born in Bratislava and my grandmother and mother both made fruit dumplings. My 3 children all love them especially my son who claims they are the “best food ever!”. However in Australia where we live everyone thinks we are quite mad to eat apricot dumplings (our favourite) as a main course however the tradition continues even on the other side of the world. We put lightly toasted bread crumbs, icing sugar and melted butter on them which works really well as the fruit releases its juices and the bread crumbs soak it up and it is a real treat to eat. My son has just come home from Thailand (where he also did a interpid tour) and is looking forward to eating some dumplings.