szarlotka

plural szarlotkas

1. countableuncountableA traditional Polish apple cake made from sweet pastry crust and spiced apple filling.

   The enticing, homey scent of apple pie wafted into the hallway as she beckoned them into her lair. […] “Something smells delicious,” Cam said. He sniffed the air, practically drooling. / “I just took a szarlotka out of the oven.”

   2011 April 12, Beth Kendrick, chapter 29, in The Bake-Off, New York, N.Y.: New American Library, →ISBN

   3 more examples

   Krystyna learned how to make szarlotka (pronounced “shar-LOT-ka”) from her grandmother decades ago and has been making it ever since. […] Make the szarlotka a day before you want to serve it. It’s far better after an overnight rest at room temperature, because then the pastry and apples meld together into a unified whole.

   2007 November 30, Greg Patent, “Szarlotka”, in A Baker’s Odyssey: Celebrating Time-Honored Recipes from America’s Rich Immigrant Heritage, Hoboken, N.J.: John Wiley & Sons, →ISBN, page 138

   The day that she reappeared, he instructed himself not to react, and he almost kept his promise to himself until she came up to him with the last piece of szarlotka and said she’d kept it for him. […] And he grabbed her hand and told her his name and said he didn’t like szarlotka, what he really liked was napoleonka, he was just like John Paul II in that he could eat eighteen pieces of napoleon cake at one sitting.

   2025 August 26, Helen Oyeyemi, “Friday”, in A New New Me: A Novel, New York, N.Y.: Riverhead Books, →ISBN

   There’s almost no Polish family without a szarlotka recipe—a short-crust apple pie with either a crumble or a second layer of pastry and occasionally a meringue topping. […] To prepare the base of the szarlotka, roll out your dough on a lightly floured work surface into a rectangle about the size of the pan.

   2025 October 14, Laurel Kratochvila, “Szarlotka: Shortcrust Apple Cake”, in Dobre Dobre: Baking from Poland and Beyond, San Francisco, Calif.: Chronicle Books, →ISBN