Cottage cheese and raspberry strudel

Strudel (literally "swirl" in German) is a Central European specialty that is very popular in Germany, Austria and the Czech Republic. Formerly it was prepared with filo pastry because it was originally a variant of oriental baklava, although nowadays puff pastry is preferred for ease of use. There are different types of fillings: apple, cheese and I even think there is one with a meat filling that is made in Argentina. It is very easy to do and the result is spectacular.

INGREDIENTS :

• 1 puff pastry
• 400g (14 oz) cottage cheese
• 200g (7 oz) raspberries
• 2 whole eggs +1 egg yolk
• 2 tablespoons of white flour
• 50g (1.8 oz) sugar
• 1 tablespoon vanilla sugar
• Icing sugar

For this recipe we need a fairly dry cottage cheese, which contains almost no water, so it is necessary to get one of that type or wrap the one you find in a food gauze and let it drain for at least 3 hours (wrap it in the gauze, squeeze and leave resting on a strainer resting on a saucepan, bowl or similar).

Once the cottage cheese has drained, we mix it with the sugar, the vanilla sugar, the eggs and the flour. We mix well.

Spread the puff pastry and place the filling in the center. We also place the raspberries cut into slices or in half on top of the filling.

In principle, the traditional thing is to make a lattice over the filling, but here we go practical, so we close the puff pastry and make some parallel cuts on top so that some of the raspberries can be seen. Leave a certain distance or the puff pastry will open to its full length.

To make it golden we paint with the egg yolk.

We preheat the oven to 200 degrees (390 F) and when it has reached the temperature we bake the strudel for 20 minutes.

Remove from the oven and let cool, sprinkling the icing sugar on top and, if you like, garnishing with some fresh raspberries.

It is served as is or accompanied with a little whipped cream. It's really yummy.