We love our food – and a foodie tour in a foreign city. However, I struggled to find any good walking food tour in Salzburg. What I did find – and which turned out to be amazing fun for our boys – was a workshop where we learned to make apple strudel and Salzburger Nockerl. Read on to find out more about our apple strudel making workshop with our tweens in Salzburg.
Our workshop was with Edelweis Cooking School and I would definitely recommend them. The workshop is held in a well-equipped kitchen-cavern, built into the side of the Monschberg mountain. Its only a 5 minute walk from the old town and around 10 minutes from Mirabell Platz and was very easy to find with Google Directions.
The workshop was in English. The other participants (a family with 3 teenage boys) and 2 older couples were all American. Each party had its own table, although the tables were pushed together at the end so everyone could eat together.
Making the apple strudel
The workshop was led by Agnes and she had an assistant with her so help was always available if needed! She started by demonstrating how to make the filling, then how to roll out and stretch the dough, before letting us loose. As the pastry needs to rest for at least 2 hours, this was pre-made for us. Agnes did however demonstrate how to make it (and it looked fairly – deceptively? – simple).
Both boys got stuck in straightaway, adding the cinnamon and sugar to the apples, then rolling out the dough. The trick is to be gentle whilst rolling out and the boys did have to be reminded (nicely) of this!
The fun part is the stretching and Agnes did this with us. Apparently, the Austrians would only class the dough as thin enough if they could read a newspaper through it. Luckily, Agnes told us that being able to see a hint of the pattern of the tablecloth underneath would be enough for us!
Once the dough is thin and filled, you then use a disposable tablecloth sheet to roll it up, ready for the oven.
Mountain time
Whilst the strudel was cooking, Agnes demonstrated our second dish of the day, Salzburger Nockerl. Nockerl are a vanilla-flavoured sweet souffle, shaped to resemble a mountain peak. Traditionally, there would be 3 peaks to represent the 3 hills surrounding Salzburg. However, the cookery school had larger oven dishes so went for 5 instead!
Rather than working together, each person made their own peak, tweens included. This was relatively straightforward, involving a lot of hand whisking and the “over the head” test to check if the meringue-like mix was thick enough. We let the boys try this.
Lunch
Once the peaks were also in the oven, we all sat down together and were served a delicious lunch of goulash soup. Agnes had made a lentil stew for my vegetarian 11 year old (the booking form allows you to specify dietary requirements).
Dessert was, unsurprisingly, Nockerl followed by strudel. Luckily, as we were all stuffed, the staff were happy to wrap up our leftovers.
We all really enjoyed this workshop and it was a fun thing to do together with our tweens on a very wet day in Salzburg! Our strudel was a success and that, apparently, means that we are now all ready to marry!
Click here to read about more of our top things to do with teens and tweens in Salzburg.
