Desserts from Romania's traditional repertoire are masterworks of delicate flavours, sweet cheeses, and flaky crusts. Romanian cuisine is quite filling, and the sweets are truly as good as they seem. These are a few of the mouthwatering desserts you can find on a Romanian menu to help you choose the delicacy that most satisfy your sweet appetite.
Many of these delicacies have been handed down through the years, and they are all well-liked options for Romanians who need something decadent and sweet for a snack, to go with hot beverages, or to eat after a filling dinner.
Papanași
Papanași is a type of traditional Romanian pastry fashioned like a doughnut with a little sphere. It is prepared by combining unsalted cheese, such as urdă or brânză de vaci (cow's milk cheese), with ordinary flour and egg dough. It can be cooked or fried. Typically shaped like doughnuts, the fried papanași can be eaten with powdered sugar, sour cream, or fruit jams.
The boiled ones are smaller, formed like nuggets, and usually covered in a mixture of sugar and breadcrumbs. You can make this dessert at home or get it in most standard Romanian eateries.
Plăcintă Cu Mere
A mixture of grated apples, cinnamon, sugar, and melted butter is distributed equally between two layers of baked dough, flavoured with vanilla sugar and orange zest, to make plăcintă cu mere, a traditional Romanian dessert. It's not really a pie, more of a pastry-type cake that tastes well warm or cold and is usually dusted with powdered sugar.
Although this meal is typically served for dessert, it may also be eaten for breakfast or as a quick snack. Eggs and dairy items can be subtracted from the dough to create the ideal sweet treat that can be consumed during the fasting time.
Savarină
Savarin cake, also called savarină cake in Romania, is a treat that is cooked until it turns golden brown and then, often overnight, is soaked in rum syrup. It's served cold with sour cherries or tart preserves on top, and it's packed with sweet whipped cream. This vanilla-flavoured cake, like the French baba au rhum and the Polish ponczowa, is usually prepared in a muffin pan or a little bundt pan.
The name Savarin cake was inspired by the renowned French culinary writer, gourmet, politician, and lawyer Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin. This dish is typically consumed on special occasions in Romania.
Amandine
Amandine is a classic chocolate dessert from Romania, filled with almond cream or chocolate. The sponge cake, syrup, filling, and glaze are the four parts of the cake.
Naturally, there are several ways to make this cake, so sometimes the components can be different. Since the 1960s, amandina has gained popularity in Romanian confectioneries. Typically, it is topped with a thin slice of chocolate in the shape of a diamond and a small amount of cream.
Vargabéles
Thin egg noodles are boiled in milk, combined with curd cheese and beaten egg whites, and then neatly sandwiched between phyllo pastry sheets for this easy treat. The dish is normally served warm and coated with powdered sugar. The noodle filling is commonly enhanced with raisins, cinnamon, vanilla, or lemon zest.
Although Cluj, Romania, is frequently credited with the cake's origin, its precise inventor is still up for debate. Some theories say it originated with a Hungarian called Varga, while others say it was initially offered on the menu of a family-run Darvas restaurant around the start of the 1900s.
Gogoși
Gogoşi are doughnuts produced the Romanian way: a dough mixture flavoured with grated orange or lemon peel and vanilla extract is deep-fried in oil. Unlike ordinary round-shaped doughnuts, traditional gogoși are made without the use of yeast or butter. The dough mixture is added to heated oil in spoonfuls, resulting in doughnuts with unique, irregular forms.
Gogoşi, a traditional handcrafted delight, are also available in bakeries and supermarkets all around Romania. It's served warm with a heavy sprinkling of icing sugar and can be filled with fruit jam or chocolate.
Plăcintă
Plăcintă, a classic Romanian fried pastry or thin cake made with flour, water, eggs, milk, yeast, and a dash of salt, gets its name from the Latin term placenta, which means flat cake. This deep-fried or fried pastry is often filled with a savoury or sweet filling and is eaten warm.
The stuffing can be made with a wide range of fillings, such as shredded cabbage, apples, jams, sour cherries, mashed potatoes, branza cheese, and sweet or sour cheese. The texture and consistency of plăcintă, which resembles flatbread, can vary from fluffy and light to crunchy and doughy.