With company and extra family members coming for dinners on a rather spontaneous schedule (read that unplanned) you wouldn’t think I’d be venturing into unknown territory and certainly nothing as intimidating as strudel.  But, when it’s the Daring Bakers breathing down your neck and my Adoptee Heather telling the world how easy and good it was, well the fire sort of warms up and you throw caution to the winds and jump in.

The apple strudel was really excellent and it would have really been enough.  But, well, on Wednesday when I was stretching the dough out, I kept thinking how much more fun and I thought even how much easier this would be to have another pair or two of opposing hands pulling and stretching this dough.

So when it turned out we’d be doing dinner on Thursday night again my mind, twisted as always, started thinking on that strudel dough again.  Then it twisted onto an onion dip I did a week ago and even served with crackers on Wednesday evening and had left over in the fridge ready for action.  

You wouldn’t normally serve the same company the same dish two nights in a row now would you?  The onion dip/spread is really good enough to do that and people do say “I want this again.” 

BUT then enter into your head how easy, fun, good that strudel was.  Everybody wants that again as well.

Twisted.  Twist onion dip into strudel and you get

Twisted Rolled

Savory Sweet

Onion Strudel

baked onion dip leftover

recipe strudel dough

This is actually very simple and somehow I’m working it out to be very complicated.  The onion dip is a very old standby, I saw several versions on allrecipes.com.   I took the mayo out and added beans.  I’m aware of three sweet onions: Texas Sweet 1015, Vidallia and Walla Walla.  Do you know others?

Sweet Onion Dip Baked

1 can (14 oz) cannelloni beans

1 to 2 cups parmesan cheese grated finely

1 large Texas sweet onion chopped medium or even large

1 block (8 oz) low fat cream cheese room temp

2 clove garlic minced finely

The beans & cream cheese could be mashed with a fork, I made them nearly smooth in a food processor.  Mix in the chopped onion, parmesan and garlic.  Place in a shallow baking dish.

Bake at 350° for 45 minutes to an hour until the mix is bubbly and brown on top.

DB Strudel Dough

from “Kaffeehaus – Exquisite Desserts from the Classic Cafés of Vienna, Budapest and Prague” by Rick Rodgers

200 g unbleached AP flour

1/8 teaspoon salt

106 ml water, plus more if needed
30 ml vegetable oil, more for coating the dough

1/2 teaspoon cider vinegar

Whisk the dry ingredients (flour & salt).

Mix liquids (water, oil & apple cider vinegar).

Pour liquids into dry ingredients and mix.  Knead about 5 minutes till smooth.  Oil the dough ball and wrap in plastic wrap.  Leave at room temperature for at least 2 hours.  I mix mine in the morning and leave it until the very last minute before I’m wanting it to go into the oven.

I used my linen heavily floured to roll it out.  When I did this for the DB Apple strudel, I stretched it by myself.  When I did it for the onion appetizer, I had Gorn & my Dad come help.  Now people, that is really pretty fun.  Gorn is really not a foodie.  Dad is 93 for another month and worked in a bakery when he was 18 but never touched strudel dough.  It was a fabulous circle of three stretchers.  I really wish I had photos but all six hands were under the dough.  Oh my we got beautiful thin strudel dough with those six hands.

To Assemble the Onion Strudel:

I mixed to break up the cold left over baked onion dip.

Buttered the rolled out strudel dough.  I’ve now used my hands to spread the butter, a very fine pastry brush and a plastic teflon pastry brush.  The plastic teflon worked the best for me.  My hands and the fine pastry brushed tended to want to pull and break the dough.

I ground up some almond silvers and mixed those with some panko to spread over the buttered dough.  Spread the onion dip mix at one end of the dough and rolled up.

Bake at 400° for 35 minutes.

Everybody was wild for this.

I haven’t forgotten I am going to do a give away ... soon ... but not yet.