Lex Eats Local: Chimney Cakes Are Back in Boise

Cinnamon-sugar and cheese-and-caraway chimney cakes from Transylvanian Kürtőskalács.

Walking through Capital City Public Market in the summer of 2017, shoppers were beguiled by a mouthwatering smell: warm dough, cinnamon, and honey.

Their noses led to Boise Chimney Cakes, a white-topped booth run by hobbyist baker Chris Mortensen. Mortensen baked kürtőskalács (also known as kürtős, kurtosh, or chimney cakes) to order. While customers watched he wrapped snakes of dough around metal cylinders, grilled them for four to six minutes and finished them with a glaze of honey and dusting of cinnamon sugar. It was a recipe he pieced together after traveling to visit his Bulgarian brother-in-law overseas and trying the iconic Transylvanian dessert for the first time.

“It was fun to watch the kids’ faces as I put that cinnamon sugar all over (the chimney cakes). Of course, the parents’ eyes lit up too, like, ‘Wow, that’s a lot of sugar!’’” Mortensen recalled.

Courtesy Chris Mortensen/Boise Chimney Cakes

Mortensen ran Boise Chimney Cakes for just over two seasons of CCPM, but retired his grill in 2018 to pursue a tech career full time. For several years, Boise’s markets continued without chimney cakes — but that may be about to change.

Now, the same intoxicating smell of warm dough and cinnamon wafts from under a half-raised garage door in the Monterra Townhomes complex off Boise’s Federal Way.

This time, the pastries are crafted by Andrea Csoregi and Arpad Budai, a married couple who grew up in the small town of Banffyhunyad in Transylvania, Romania. Sixteen years ago, Csoregi won the “visa lottery” and moved from Europe to California’s Bay Area. She spent 11 years embedded in the Hungarian community there, and felt called to bake and sell the Transylvanian kürtőskalács she remembered from childhood.

However, that dream never became a reality. Her former husband discouraged the project and she was hesitant to “jump ship” from her day job as a florist to start a business. It wasn’t until years later — after divorcing, moving to Boise, and remarrying her childhood friend Budai — that she made kürtős again.

The process was complicated. As Csoregi explains it, traditional kürtős are wrapped around wooden dowels and baked over hot charcoal in a closed oven.

Andrea Csoregi and Arpad Budai. (Courtesy Andrea Csoregi)

“Grandma usually made bread every week, like for a whole huge family — her three daughters and whatever nieces — and they baked the bread in an old oven, like an old-fashioned oven,” she said. “When they got done with the bread, [Grandma] pulled out the charcoal on the front of the oven, and they did these chimney cakes while they were waiting for the bread. They made some sweet dough and made chimney cakes so we had them for the weekend as a sweet treat.”

But baking over charcoal is hard, messy, dangerous work: Not something to try in a Boise townhome. So Csoregi and Budai improvised. Budai turned an old curtain rod and marshmallow skewers into chimney cake rollers and they cooked kürtős outdoors on their grill. Before long, Csoregi placed an order for an oven that could rotate and bake eight chimney cakes at once.

At first she and Budai baked for friends and family in their home kitchen. They handed out pastries and free samples from their garage. Then Csoregi launched the Transylvanian Kürtőskalács Facebook page and started taking orders, and Romanian families traveled all the way from Nampa and Kuna to West Boise for a taste of home.

Growing up in Banffyhunyad, Csoregi remembers chimney cakes baked on “rolls” 20-inches long and five inches in diameter — so big she and her childhood friends could stick their hands inside and pretend to have chimney cake casts. Her homemade versions are roughly half that size and come in four flavors: plain (sugar only), cinnamon-sugar, walnut and cheese-and-caraway.

The toppings form a crisp shell on ribbons of soft dough redolent of lemon and vanilla sugar. Unraveling the hollow chimney cakes with your fingers is a messy, rewarding experience that the company Kürtős Inc. claims dates back to 1784, when the first known recipe was recorded in a Transylvanian countess’s cookbook. National Geographic calls kürtős “the oldest pastry in Hungary.” They’re still popular at street fairs and festivals.

Csoregi dreams of turning Transylvanian Kürtőskalács into a catering company or food stall she can run side-by-side with her day job as a purchaser for a landscaping company. She imagines filling cone-shaped sweet kürtős with ice cream and savory ones with sauerkraut and sausage.

“I really want to go out on the market in front of the people so they can see how this one is really made. [It’s] not just like, ‘Okay, throw it in the oven and a piece of bread will come out.’ It’s work; but it’s worth it,” Csoregi said.

Until then, curious eaters can find Csoregi and Budai’s handiwork at Facebook.com/ChimneyShack or text orders to 408-310-0641. The kürtős are around $6.25 each or [you can purchase] a pack of four for around $25.

Did you miss last month’s “Lex Eats Local”? Read it here.

This story was originally published by Boise Weekly. Read the original here.