| Karpatka | |
| Alternate Name: | Polish Carpathian cream cake |
| Country: | Poland |
| Course: | Dessert |
| Type: | Cream pie |
| National Cuisine: | Polish cuisine |
| Main Ingredient: | Choux pastry, shortcrust pastry, cream filling, icing sugar, marmalade or fruit preserves (optional) |
| Variations: | Napoleonka |
Karpatka is a traditional Polish cream pie with custard cream filling[1] or some sort of vanilla milk pudding cream filling (i.e. a cream made of areated butter mixed with crème pâtissière). Professionally it is made of one sheet of short pastry covered with a layer of choux pastry with a layer of the cream in between. Nevertheless, the version with two layer of choux pastry is popular. Another layer of marmalade or fruit preserves is sometimes added. The cake is dusted with icing sugar.
The dessert takes its name from the mountain-like pleated shape of the powdered choux pastry, which resembled the snowy peaks of the Carpathian Mountains – Karpaty in Polish.[2] The origins of the desert are unclear; it most likely emerged at the turn of the 1950s and 1960s, but its popularity only became widespread in the 1970s and 1980s. The official name "karpatka" was first coined or recorded in 1972 by a group of philology students.[3] Traditionally, one large slice of the pie was served with coffee or tea.
There are "karpatka" baking mixes available in shops across Poland. In 1995, "Karpatka" became a trademark registered for a company called Delecta for the determination of cream powder in the Polish Patent Office.[4] [5] [6]