We prepared a recipe for Poppy Seed Strudel from Lilly Joss Reich, The Viennese Pastry Cookbook. Our final reflections on this project are as follows.

The most interesting thing we learned was that in Austria, and many other European countries, poppy seed is a symbol of wealth as the tiny seeds represent coins.

However, our classmates did not enjoy the texture of our strudel, because the poppy seeds were quite hard and grainy. One person wrote, “I liked the chocolate taste with the raisins, but … not the texture of the poppy seeds …”.

Overall, based on the shopping, preparing, serving, and our classmates’ views, we rate this recipe six out of ten. Although finding the ingredients was relatively easy, preparing the dough and baking it was time-consuming. 

Guten Appetit!