The Legend of the Austrian Pie
Tyrolean pies are now known in manycountries, and in fact it could happen that the world would not have known about them, had it not been for the case. In Austria, there is one old legend, which could well be in reality. The legend says that once, several centuries ago, the Austrian Emperor Franz Joseph went hunting with his retinue to the forests of the neighborhood of Tyrol. After a successful day, with the benefit of being held in the bosom of nature, the august person and her associates were surprised to find that they had lost their way. After wandering for a while over dense thickets, the travelers stumbled upon a path that led them to a small village at the foot of the Alps. Entering the first hut, tired and hungry Franz Joseph confused the poor of its inhabitants with a request to feed him with his entourage. Since the peasants did not have any fine food for noble persons in the house, the hostess submitted the only dish she prepared on the eve of the arrival of unexpected guests. It was a berry pie baked according to an old family recipe. After trying the treat, the emperor was surprised and delighted with his delicate taste. Franz Joseph generously repaid the peasants. This family has never been poorer, becoming the supplier of delicious pies to the Austrian court, where they were tried by notable people. That's how the glory of the pie gradually grew, and later the name of the Tyrolean pie, and its recipe eventually became available to those around it. 
What is the famous Austrian dessert?
The famous Tyrolean pie is a confectionerya product made of sand or biscuit dough with a delicate custard, decorated with berries or fruits. The most widespread are cherry, blueberry and strawberry desserts, but many prefer pineapple, apple and even cheese cake. In addition to the classical version, at present there are several types of Tyrolean pie. It can be prepared as a charlotte or as a cake filled with fruit and berry jelly. In the dough you can add nuts, cinnamon, cloves. But fruit or berries should be the mandatory ingredients of this dish. Below are 3 recipes of Austrian dessert. And every sweet tooth will find a Tyrolean pie to your liking.
Sand cake with cherries
This is a recipe for a classic pie from Tyrol. To make it, you need 3 groups of products.
In the beginning, you should wash the cherries, clean them ofbones and fall asleep with sugar or powdered sugar. Cut the butter with the knife into pieces and, after mixing with sugar, mix to a homogeneous mass. Then add the eggs, and after the flour and knead the elastic dough. To cool a warm sandy mass, it should be placed for 30 minutes in the refrigerator. Cool the dough and roll it neatly onto a greased baking sheet. Bake for 15 minutes at 220 degrees. Remove the prepared base from the oven and, having cooled it, put it in a deep form. The recipe for this Tyrolean custard includes roasted flour, which gives the cream a nutty taste. 1 tbsp. l. Flour should be fried in a pan until golden. Then you should whip the yolks with sugar powder. In the mixture add browned flour and 1 tbsp. l. starch, whisk until smooth. In a saucepan, preheat a glass of milk, add the cream, mix everything, add the remaining milk and, stirring the mass, bring it to a boil. When the first signs of thickening appear, remove the saucepan from the fire and cool the cream to room temperature. On a sand base in the form lay a warm cream and put the product in the refrigerator. After 30 minutes, take out the pie from the fridge, decorate it with sweet cherries on top. Dilute 100 grams of cold water instant gelatin, add the juice that gave the cherries. With this mixture, pour in the cherries and put the dessert in the refrigerator again for a couple of hours to solidify the layer of fruit jelly. The classic Tyrolean pie is ready! 
Cake with dried fruits filling
This recipe allows you to quickly and easily cookAnother kind of Tyrolean goodies. First you need to stock up on the necessary products. To make a dough, you need 500 g of flour, 250 g of butter and sugar, 2 eggs, a pinch of salt and 1 teaspoon of baking powder. For the filling will be needed 2 tbsp. prunes without seeds, 1 tsp. vanilla sugar, 2 tsp. sugar and sugar powder, a few spices for piquancy: cardamom and cloves. Preliminary it is necessary to soak for a hour prunes in cold water for softening. Butter the butter with sugar, add the eggs and mix until a uniform mass is formed. Sift the flour, combine with a baking powder and salt and add to the egg-and-oil mixture. Knead the dough to a consistency of thick sour cream and divide it into two parts. With parchment paper, lather the mold or baking tray and lay out the first half of the dough on them. Bake it for 10 minutes. At this time, throw back the soaked prunes into a colander and cut each fruit into halves. Mix them with sugar, spices and vanilla sugar. Get out of the oven or oven form with a caked cake, lay on it a filling of dried fruits and pour all the second part of the dough. The product should be baked for about 40 minutes. Then the pie should be taken out of the oven and, after a little cooling, sprinkle sugar powder on top. This Tyrolean recipe can be modified by replacing the filling of dried fruits with fresh fruits: apricots or plums.
Cheese dessert from Tyrol
Another delicious dessert, which came from Tyrol, -this is a cheese cake, the main component of which, giving it an originality, is cottage cheese. To prepare this dessert you will need 500 g of cottage cheese, 300 g of sugar, 100 g of butter, 1 tbsp. flour, baking powder, 4 eggs, 2 small sour apples and 150 g strawberries. In addition, you need to have at hand a half-lemon, 30 g cognac and 30 grams of water. The recipe for making a cheese dessert is pretty simple. Beforehand, squeeze the juice out of the lemon and rub the cottage cheese through a sieve, sift the flour and mix with a baking powder. Soften the butter and beat it with a mixer with 250 grams of sugar. Continuing to beat the mass, pour a thin trickle of lemon juice with cognac into it, and then enter the eggs. After that, pour flour with baking powder and cottage cheese. With the help of a mixer, you can achieve a homogeneous mass, in consistency resembling thick sour cream. Cover a round baking dish with parchment paper and pour in prepared dough. Put in a preheated oven and bake a Tyrolean pie at a temperature of 180 degrees for about 20 minutes. While the dough is getting ready, you need to make a syrup and fruit-berry top of the pie. For the syrup, the remaining 50 grams of sugar should be mixed in a saucepan with 30 ml of water, put the dishes on a small fire and cook the mixture until thick. Apples and strawberries are washed, remove the core from the apples and cut them into slices, cut the berries into plates. Peek out the pie from the oven and cool it a little. After that, it is beautiful to put apples and strawberries and pour them with syrup. When the syrup has cooled, the dish is ready. 
Tips for the housewives to note
As already mentioned above, Tyrolean pie can becook differently. In any recipe something is brought in, the composition of products is slightly modified, only the main components are left. For example, pies with fillings can be decorated from above with custard from a classic recipe or prepare a protein cream. Some sweets are filled with caramels or chocolate glazes. You can cook pies with one kind of berries or mix them with each other, for example, a combination of only sweet berries or sour and sweet, as you like. By the way, it is recommended for Tyrolean dessert to use not only fresh, but also frozen berries, however, before they are put on a pie, they must first be thawed. If the landlady wants to make a high biscuit, you can bake a few cakes, layering them with fruit and berry stuffing, and placing a cream and another layer of berries and fruits on top. Thus, you get a real Austrian cake. The custard and jelly that are part of the pies have a rather unstable structure, so Tyrolean pies in the shops can be seen in paper forms, otherwise they will just spread out in different directions during transportation. At home, too, should take care of the molds to give the delicacies stability. Some housewives add a little gelatin to the custard, which makes it more dense, but the cream gets a different taste. If you want to fill the fruit and berries of the top layer of jelly pie, it is better to buy a special jelly for cakes, which freezes very quickly, without soaking into the product. The most delicate Austrian desserts with centuries-old history travel around the world year after year, gaining thousands of new fans, and this is natural. After having tasted delicious pies at least once, their lovers begin to experiment with the preparation of these confectionery products, trying one recipe after another, baking sand and biscuit dainties, mixing various fruits and berries in them and creating their own sweet masterpieces.
