Apple Strudel Baking Show with Tasting at Schönbrunn Palace Vienna

Schönbrunn Palace and its courtyard

Schönbrunn Palace is the former summer residence of the Habsburg rulers and the most visited sight in Austria, a Baroque palace of 1,441 rooms set in a vast formal park on the western edge of Vienna. The strudel show takes place not in the palace rooms but in the Kavalierstrakt, the long wing of former court buildings on the left side of the main courtyard as you enter through the gate from Schönbrunner Schlossstrasse. Here the court confectionery continues the tradition of the bakers who once supplied pastries and sweets for imperial receptions.

Getting to Schönbrunn Palace is simple: the Schönbrunn metro station on line U4 is about ten minutes on foot from the courtyard, and trams and buses stop at the gate. Many travellers combine a Schönbrunn Palace tour with the strudel show, since the show is only twenty minutes and the courtyard sits right by the palace entrance; arrive at least ten minutes early, because the show starts punctually.

The strudel show in the historic vaults

The demonstration is held in the brick-vaulted basement of the confectionery, a room that keeps the feel of an old imperial kitchen. A pastry chef works at a long table while explaining each step in English: how the dough is made from flour, water, a little oil and nothing else, why it must rest, and how it is stretched over the backs of the hands on a floured cloth until it covers the table and turns translucent. The chef then scatters buttered breadcrumbs, sliced apples, sugar, cinnamon and raisins over the sheet and rolls it with the cloth into the familiar log before it goes into the oven.

The whole show lasts around twenty minutes and you are seated throughout, so it suits children, older visitors and anyone tired from the palace. Questions are welcome, and it is one of the few places in Vienna where the traditional hand-stretching technique is shown live every day rather than described.

Viennese apple strudel and coffee

Apfelstrudel is the pastry most closely tied to Vienna, with the oldest known handwritten recipe dating from 1696 and kept in the city library. The dish arrived through the Habsburg lands from the layered doughs of the Ottoman and Hungarian kitchens, and Viennese bakers refined it into the paper-thin sheet with its soft apple filling, dusted with icing sugar. After the show you receive a slice still warm from the oven, served with a cup of Viennese coffee, the drink around which the city's coffee-house culture grew up.

You also take home a printed copy of the original recipe, which makes the strudel show a popular choice for those who want to recreate a taste of Vienna in their own kitchen. The confectionery's café and shop next door sell other Viennese cakes and pastries if you want to extend the break, and the recipe uses only simple ingredients: flour, apples, sugar, butter, breadcrumbs, cinnamon and raisins.

The gardens, Gloriette and zoo around the show

Because the show takes only twenty minutes, it slots easily into a half day at Schönbrunn. The palace park is free to enter and open from early morning until dusk; from the courtyard you can walk through the Great Parterre to the Neptune Fountain and climb to the Gloriette, the colonnaded monument on the hill with the best view over the palace and the city. The Privy Garden, the maze, the Palm House and the Schönbrunn Zoo, founded in 1752 and the oldest zoo still operating in the world, each need their own ticket.

The best time to visit Schönbrunn is early, when the palace tours are less crowded, leaving the late-morning or afternoon strudel sessions as a relaxed break. In winter the courtyard hosts the palace Christmas market, and the warm vaults of the confectionery are especially welcome then. Allow at least three hours for the palace, gardens and show together.