Almás pite

The story

Almás pite is a Hungarian home-baked sheet cake: two sheets of tender short dough around a thick layer of grated apples with sugar and cinnamon, baked in a rectangular pan and cut into squares. The name sounds like pie, but in American terms it is closer to apple bars, firm enough to pack and eat by hand. Apples run all through Hungarian baking. The strudel known across Europe was once called by its Hungarian name, rétes, and almás rétes, apple strudel, is one of its most common fillings alongside the sweet curd cheese version, túrós rétes. Pite is the simpler relative, with no paper-thin dough to stretch. Gergelyné Varga Edit's 1990 cookbook Sütemények, édességek opens with pite in three fillings, apple, curd cheese and sour cherry. Her dough is enriched with egg yolks, sour cream, rum and a little goose fat; the apples go in with lemon, raisins and cinnamon over a layer of ground walnuts, and the cooled cake is cut into squares about 6 centimeters across and dusted with vanilla sugar. It has no holiday of its own and suits the cold months because it uses stored apples. Bake it a day ahead, cut it once it is fully cool, and dust it with powdered sugar just before serving.