Austrian Sweet Dish - Kaiserschmarn
Kaiserschmarren with Plum Compote
This is a traditional and very old Sweet Dish recipe from Austria. It's a favorite of young and old. It can be eaten as a main dish at dinner time or as a desert. The recipe consists of two separate dishes. Nevertheless, both dishes compliment each other so they shouldn't be left out. The compote should be prepared in advance. The original recipe asks for fresh prunes. If you don't have prunes available, you may substitute with plums as they do taste similar.
Cook Time
Ingredients for the Plum Compote
- 750 g Plums (preferable prunes)
- 125 g sugar
- 0.25 lemon (juice)
- 1 cinnamon stick
- 6 dl water
How to prepare the Plum Compote
- Cut prunes into four equal sized pieces. Put water, lemon juice, cinnamon stick and sugar into a pot and heat up. Once it boils, reduce the heat and add the prunes. Don’t cook the prunes for too long, only until the mixture bubbles, no more than 3 minues. Otherwise you have mashed prunes, and since this is a compote we don’t want mashed fruit. Take it off the stove and set aside to cool.
- Set the plum or prune compot aside while preparing the Kaiserschmarren batter.
Ingredients for Kaiserschmarren
- 100 g raisins
- 5 tablespoons Rum
- 6 eggyolk
- 1 package vanille sugar
- 1 tablespoon sugar
- Little salt
- 250 g flour
- 500 ml milk
- 50 g butter
- 6 eggwhites
- 4 tablespoon powdered sugar
This serves four people but if you use this as a main dish and have very hungry people present, you might want to recalculate the ingredients by multiplying it by 1.5 or even 2. Whenever I make this for my family I have to make a double batter. They love it and can't get enough.
How to make your Kaiserschmarren
- Soak raisins in rum for at least 30 minutes. You won’t taste the rum afterwards. It just really gives it a nice flavor. If you don't like cooking with alcohol, you can substitute it with water. You just won't get the exact same flavor.
- Use a hand mixer beating the egg yolk together with the vanilla sugar, salt and sugar. If you don't have vanilla sugar, you may also use liquid vanilla as long as it is a true vanilla flavor. Chemical vanilla will give the Kaiserschmarren an odd flavor.
- Add the flour and milk, switching off, one spoon of flour, then a little bit of milk, mixing it continuously.
- Melt the butter, adding it to the mixture.
- Afterwards add the stiff eggwhites, mixing it in well enough so you can’t see any of the egg whites.
- At the end you will add the raisins without the rum.
Heat up some butter in a skillet. Add enough of the egg mixture into the skillet to make a 1cm-thick pancake. Reduce the heat a little. Check the color of it. Once it shows a nice golden color make four equal pieces by cutting it with a wooden spatula. Then you flip each piece over and wait until it again shows a beautiful golden color. Then you break the four pieces into bite-size pieces with the spatula again. Sprinkle it with regular sugar, turning it a few more times until the sugar has carmelized. Sprinkle it with powdered sugar and serve with the fruit compote.
