Vargabéles is a Transylvanian dessert, its hometown is Kolozsvár (Cluj-Napoca). It was first made in the restaurant of the Darvas family in the 1920s or 1930s. It’s a special cake that consists of a cottage cheese – pasta filling and two layers of dough. The dough was originally a shortcrust pastry, but nowadays it’s replaced by store-bought phyllo dough sheets. The recipe was so treasured that vargabéles was delivered by plane from Kolozsvár to the Gundel restaurant in Budapest during the World War II.

The cake’s specialty lies in the filling: it’s a combination of a cottage cheese cream and cooked angel hair/vermicelli pasta (cérnametélt in Hungarian). The filling is covered by phyllo dough, but if you can’t aquire it, feel free to use puff pastry or knead a plain shortcrust pastry. Vargabéles can be served as a dessert or as a main dish after a hearty, thick soup.