Karpatka

Karpatka is a traditional Polish cream pie with some sort of vanilla buttercream filling – aerated butter mixed with eggs beaten and steamed with sugar (krem russel)^[1][2], aerated butter mixed with crème pâtissière (according to Polish gastronomy textbooks made from whole eggs)^[2] or just thick milk kissel enriched with melted butter.^{[3][note 1]} Professionally it is made of one sheet of short pastry covered with a layer of choux pastry with a thin layer of marmalade and a thick layer of cream in between.^[1][2][4][5] Nevertheless, the version with two layers of choux pastry is popular.^[5][6] The cake is cut into squares or rectangles and dusted with icing sugar.^[1][2]

The dessert takes its name from the mountain-like pleated shape of the powdered choux pastry, which resembles the snowy peaks of the Carpathian Mountains – Karpaty in Polish.^[7]

The origins of the dessert 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.^[5] The official name "karpatka" was first coined or recorded in 1972 by a group of philology students.^[5][8] 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.^[5][9][10]