Hundred layer strudel or prekmurska gibanica – even though it’s a traditional Slovenian dessert,  transborder Hungarians living in Slovenia often bake this cake, so it has place in my recipe collection. If you see a resemblance between this “strudel” and flódni, you are not far from the truth.

This cake is a sweet multilayered pastry consisting of 4 kinds of filling (apple, walnut, poppy seed and cottage cheese), shortcrust pastry and phyllo dough/puff pastry dough sheets. (Despite the rich filling the cake’s Hungarian name – hundred layer strudel/százrétű rétes –  is obviously an overstatement.) For centuries, prekmurska gibanica was served as a festive and ritual dish, but the exact origin of the recipe is not clear.

If you google its recipe, you can find many versions with different quantities and changing order of layers. Whichever you choose, you will need a day off, patience and endurance to make this strudel cake. I tried to make my cake as simple as possible, but it took a couple of hours before we could enjoy this sublime pastry.