Cakes, pastries, and Struklji - Slovenia

Prekmurska Gibanicais not a light dessert. We could also say that Prekmurska Gibanica is a cake with the most layers possible. There is a pastry (filo or strudel) and it has layers of poppy seeds, apple filling, cottage cheese filling, walnut filling, and an optional topping such as sour cream. Some recipes include raisins in the apple layer, but if you deviate too far from the original recipe it can’t keep the same name as the name and ingredients are protected by law. After joining the European Union the Prekmurian layer cake was protected on a European level with the label ‘Traditional Speciality Guaranteed’.

Traditional štruklji are made with filo pastry and have a filling of your choice. Mostly, you can get cottage cheese ones or the very popular buckwheat ones with a walnut filling.

The interesting thing about štuklji is they can be served salty as a side dish next to meat (especially tasty when served with venison) or as a dessert with breadcrumbs for the topping. štruklji fit in the comfort food category. Sweet or savory, their taste is good and you will certainly feel warm after eating them. Maybe that's the reason they are often served as a symbol of hospitality in Slovenia.

Poppy seeds, apple, and fig feature in many pastries in Slovenia

This is a sausage roll. The pastry is softer than the NZ ones.

These figs are the perfect size, two mouthfuls. Picked them up at the local farmers market.


The Ljubljana cake is like no other. It’s made with ingredients that are typical for Slovenian region, such as buckwheat, figs, chestnuts, pumpkin and honey. It’s usually decorated with pumpkin seeds, which gives them a more earthy look and taste.

The cake also comes with a romantic story, a legend if you will. It is said, that the Ljubljana cake was born, when a clever cook tried to win the heart of a beautiful maiden, a daughter of the lord that lived in the Ljubljana castle. The lord wanted nothing but the best for his daughter and decided that he who comes up with the tastiest dessert, would be rewarded with his daughter’s hand in marriage. The creative cook and the beautiful lass did eventually marry and Ljubljana cake was served as a starter, main course and dessert. As the cake recipe is a carefully guarded secret, it’s not available just everywhere. Currently, you can enjoy the cake at the Grand Café Ljubljana, under the Plečnik’s arcades at the farmer’s market, where you can enjoy the view on the Pogačarjev square whilst enjoying your slice of cake.


This is called burek. It's basically a pie made with filo pastry. The local supermarket sells three sorts: meat, apple, and cheese.


Kremsnita or cream cake, characterized by delicate puff pastry atop layers of light vanilla cream and custard, is a dish that can be dated back to the height of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in the 18th and 19th centuries. Almost all the countries under the Hapsburg’s former reign still have a version of the cake: Bosnians enjoy krempita, Polish love kremówka, and Slovakians dine happily on their krémeš. The Slovenian version of cream cake is kremna rezina and it only comes from the patisseries at Lake Bled. It is nicer than our custard square.