My Favorite Desserts in Brasov, Romania

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Travel allows those of us with a sweet tooth to indulge in a whole new world of desserts and pastries! Everywhere I go, I have to try the local sweets, for science. Somehow, despite my lifelong appreciation of sugar, I always end up discovering traditional foods I’d never even heard of before. My trip to Romania was no different, and I now have some new favorite desserts to spread the word about back home.

This list of my top favorite desserts in Romania is mainly compiled from treats I tried in the city of Brașov. It may be biased towards Western tastes, and my own personal taste (for instance, I am anti-raisins and a lot of traditional desserts in Romania have raisins). Since I’m not a local, I don’t have enough hubris to call this a list of the “best” desserts in Brasov or in Romania. That said, I did research prior to ordering at cafes, restaurants, and street food vendors so I could choose foods that are specific and authentic to the region. I was on a mission. As you’ll read, I also consulted four different locals for their opinions.

Covrigi

Covrigi is a street food snack made of twisted bread that is very similar to a pretzel. Within a five minute walk in any direction from my accommodation in Brașov, there was always a covrigi stand! A classic covrigi is topped with salt, sesame seeds, or poppy seeds, but nowadays you can order a variety of different flavors. My favorite savory flavor was the cheesy covrigi, and my favorite sweet flavor was a decadent pistachio cream covrigi at a shop called Mokka in Brașov.

Joanna from The World in My Pocket travel blog is originally from Romania and told me that the elaborate covrigi flavors are new “hipster” concoctions and really not traditional at all, so if you want to keep it authentic, maybe order the classic ones. If you’re a dessert lover, though, I think that pistachio cream flavor was one of the best desserts I tried during my entire Romania trip! Mokka also sells a salted caramel and a papanasi-flavored covrigi.

I have read several theories about the history of covrigi, including about the origins of the name itself. Because of its similarity to German pretzels, I like the idea that covrigi came to Romania alongside the Transylvanian Saxons in the 12th century.

Alivanca

Alivanca (plural: alivenci) is a custard-y cake made of cornmeal and cream cheese. It’s like a cross between a cheesecake and a sweet cornbread or corn muffin that you’d get in the American South.

Alivenci comes from the old Moldavia region, not to be confused with modern-day Moldova. I have seen various recipes that include cottage cheese, sour cream, or sheep’s milk cheese. I imagine any recipe that includes sheep’s milk cheese has to be incredible, because when I took a guided day trip to the Romanian mountain villages of Măgura and Peștera, we tried brânză de burduf, a sheep’s milk cheese made locally by the shepherds in the area and stored in a pine bark container. It was the best cheese I’ve ever tasted in my entire life, and I’m not even exaggerating. It was so soft, flavorful, slightly sweet, and had nice texture. I remember thinking it reminded me of what you’d taste in a cheesecake.

I loved the alivanca at Ograda, a restaurant in the main square in Brașov.

Lángos

Lángos is another street food that comes in both savory and sweet flavors, though the savory ones are more traditional. This deep-fried dough “snack” (it’s quite heavy for a snack; Atlas Obscura calls it a “gut bomb”) is actually Hungarian, though large parts of Transylvania used to be part of Hungary. It may have originated with the Romans or perhaps with Turkish occupation.

I hate to keep relating Romanian/Hungarian foods back to American foods, but that’s my point of reference and it may be for some of my readers too – lángos reminds me of Navajo frybread. It’s sort of flat, almost like a pizza, but with air pockets inside that make it puffier.

Lángos is usually topped with sour cream, grated cheese, and garlic, but modern variations may include bacon, ham, cabbage, or mushrooms. The dessert versions can have fruit, chocolate, or nutella. In Sighișoara, one of many day trips I took from Brașov via public transportation, I ordered a chocolate one, which was made right in front of me and came out piping hot. I think that’s got to be the best way to try one, considering the name comes from the Hungarian word for flame (láng)! I can imagine lángos being a real hit at an outdoor carnival back home, giving funnel cake a run for its money.

For most of its history, lángos wasn’t fried but baked towards the front of a brick oven near the flame. Large loaves of bread were generally baked just once a week since it was quite a lengthy, costly, and involved process. Small pieces of the dough were broken off and would bake quickly while the oven was still heating up, creating lángos.

Papanasi

Pronounced “papa-nash,” papanași is probably the most famous and iconic dessert native to Romania. These fried or boiled donuts are sometimes described as sweet cheese dumplings, although when I think of a dumpling, I think of a filling encased in dough. The papanași I’ve tried are uniform all the way through, the cheese being mixed into the dough itself rather than used as a filling.

Typically there will be a large donut on the bottom and a small donut hole on top so that the papanași looks almost like a snowman! It’s topped with sour cream and fruit jam. The bottom piece may or may not have a hole in the middle, so I use the term “donut” liberally. 

An order of papanași usually comes with 2 or 3 of them and it’s impossible to finish on your own; it’s best shared between two people. You may be thinking, “challenge accepted,” but I’m being so serious. I develop a second stomach for desserts but even I can’t finish a serving of papanași; it feels like it expands in your stomach and gets worse with time as you try to power through.

La Ceaun is a popular restaurant in Brașov that is maybe a bit touristy, but still has great reviews that attest to its authentic flavors. They have two locations. At the Piata Sfatului location, you can order a typical papanași, and at the Weiss location they instead sell something called “spoon donuts.” I think the difference is that their traditional version is boiled and their “spoon donuts” are fried; otherwise they are pretty similar. I preferred the spoon donuts because they have a crispiness on the outside. 

My Romanian friends said that my pictures make them skeptical that perhaps I didn’t try “the right” papanași. You can get them at pretty much every restaurant, so it’s hard to try them all to compare! RJ On Tour, who lives in Brașov, suggested Casa Tudor for the best papanași, and both Joanna from The World in My Pocket and a recipe blog called Delicious Romania recommend Caru’ cu bere in Bucharest.

Everything at La Vatra Ardealului

I asked my tour guide from the Măgura trip where to get the best desserts in Brașov, and he immediately recommended La Vatra Ardealului located across from the Black Church. He suggested trying the diplomat cake or the nufar.

Nufar (“water lily”) is a light airy cream encased in a thin chocolate candy shell standing on what I think was a rum-flavored chocolate cake-like base. Since I had just eaten a big lunch, this was the perfect light treat that wouldn’t fill me up too much! 

Tort Diplomat is also light, made with custard, whipped cream, fruit, and sometimes ladyfingers. But I ended up choosing the Deliciu cake since I saw multiple positive reviews about it. It has alternating layers of cream and chocolate cake with a fruit topping. They keep it cold so it almost tastes like an ice cream cake.

The display cases are completely lined with traditional Romanian pastries and it’s hard to choose just one! You can rest assured that whatever you pick will be authentic and not too adulterated for the sake of trendiness. A few that caught my eye include rulou cu frișcă, savarină, ruladă cu zmeură, and ișler sandwich cookies. They have the classic Romanian chocolate cakes such as amandine and joffre cake. Reviews recommend the nut and vanilla cake or prajitura cu vanilie si nuca, the house cake or tortul casei, and the deliciu.

Most restaurants tend to have papanași or an apple tart on their dessert menus, so if you want to try any of these other distinctive Romanian pastries, you’ll need to seek them out at specialty shops like La Vatra Ardealului.

Other Romanian Desserts, Pastries, and Candies

Cremsnit is a tasty dessert with a layer of custard sandwiched between two thin puff pastry squares. It’s commonly found throughout Central Europe and the Balkans, with its most famous variation arguably being the Bled cream cake in Slovenia. I was underwhelmed by the Bled cake and a tiny bit underwhelmed by cremsnit in Romania too. It was very good and I liked it, but maybe just a bit too boring to make my “top favorites” list. It’s also hard to eat because when you try to press your fork down into it, the pastry forces all the custard to squeeze out the sides.

Kürtőskalács, or chimney cake, is a massive cylindrical sweet bread with a caramelized sugary glaze. You’ll often see it sold at street food kiosks and it’s meant for two people. Apparently they’re best when freshly made and they don’t taste the same after a few hours. The most convenient place I could find to order one near my accommodation had pre-made cakes wrapped in plastic wrap, so I’m not sure how old they were and if I got an accurate impression of them. It was okay, but not my favorite. The sticky glaze reminded me of fake Hostess pastries back home.

Cozonac is a marbled cake-like sweet bread that looks so good, but it traditionally includes raisins and I can’t get behind raisins, so I didn’t try this one. 

I tried something akin to a brânzoaică or poale-n brau, though it was more burrito-shaped and I believe they’re usually square. This is a sweet cheese pastry that I didn’t realize would have raisins in it. Even without the raisins it wasn’t my favorite, though, because there wasn’t a good ratio of cheese to bread and it didn’t have much going for it in terms of texture or flavor. I must have tried a bad one.

Apples are commonly used in Romanian desserts, especially when apples are in-season in late summer and fall – I picked an apple straight from a tree in early October! You’ll probably see apple strudel, apple cake, or apple pie on plenty of menus. Personally, I have always felt like there is not much variation in different apple-based desserts around the world. To me, they are pretty much the same everywhere. So I didn’t prioritize them in Romania.

Somloi cake is a Hungarian trifle that is often served in Romania. On a podcast episode about traveling in Transylvania, I heard a recommendation to try it at a restaurant in Brașov called Pilvax.

Cornulete cu rahat (cornulete with Turkish delight) or cornulete cu gem (cornulete with jam) is similar to rugelach. It has a rolled shortbread shell shaped like a croissant, cannoli, or a pig-in-a-blanket, and the filling is jam or Turkish delight. I saw these sold in every grocery store I visited in Romania, pre-packaged. I never tried them because I kept waiting for an opportunity to order fresh ones at a real bakery.

Arlechin (harlequin) cake is a layer cake that gets cut into small rectangular pieces that wouldn’t look out of place at a traditional English afternoon tea. This is another treat I often saw available pre-packaged in grocery stores.

Joe’s Wafers are a mass produced snack food that I liked! They’re chocolate-covered wafers in the vein of KitKats, nothing extraordinary but an easy choice if you need a candy fix. ROM is an iconic chocolate candy brand in Romania, but the main flavor is rum, which wasn’t my favorite. They do have other flavors I didn’t get a chance to try. Făgăraș and Măgura, clearly named after mountainous regions in southern Romania, are other candy brands you might think about trying. The Viva and Olla brands both make chocolate or vanilla “pillows,” sort of like Krave cereal. Heidi is a fancier chocolate brand that I enjoyed, especially the unique apple flavor. Heidi was founded by Swiss nationals who moved to Romania.

My favorite chip (or crisp) brand in Romania was Star Pufuleti. It’s a puffed corn snack with different seasonings. One flavor is salted, another is cheese (cașcaval), and there are also unique flavors like pizza or peanut with hazelnut.

The further you dig, the more Romanian desserts there are to try – it’s overwhelming! Forums online have also clued me in to Carpathian cake, snow white cake (or lemon cake), brăduți, plăcintă cu dovleac (or cu mere), semilune, sfințișori or mucenici, hencles or lichiu sasesc cu prune, julfa with hemp mousse, salam de biscuiti, etc.

Other Foods to Try in Romania

I especially liked paprikash, tender chunks of chicken drowned in a sauce made of paprika, tomatoes, onions, and garlic. I ordered it at Am Rosenanger, a restaurant in Brașov known for Transylvanian Saxon food. This restaurant came recommended by my free walking tour guide in Brașov.

I had Bulz, an extremely heavy dish of polenta baked with cheese, sour cream, and sometimes a fried egg on top, at a few different places. It can be hit-or-miss. The place where I enjoyed it most was the guest house in Peștera that used locally sourced sheep’s milk cheese.

Another thing that is hit or miss depending on where you order it is zascusca, a spread that you put on bread which is made of tomatoes, onions, eggplant, peppers, and sometimes mushrooms or other vegetables.

I loved the sour mushroom soup at La Ceaun in Brașov! There are many different types of sour soup in Romania, including meatball sour soup, veal, or vegetable. I liked the mushroom sour soup because it had a thick flavorful base rather than a clear broth, though I’m sure all of the varieties are made differently depending on where you go.

As you can tell I’m not big on meat or fish, which is why I’ve written a guide to Romanian desserts and not a guide to Romanian meals!

I still have a few weeks left in Romania, so if I’ve messed up and missed out on any of your favorite desserts, let me know! I still have time to remedy this! Although, I’ve been trying so many desserts over the last few weeks that I think I’ve achieved the impossible – burning out my sweet tooth. Have I met my match in Brașov?

Out of all the snacks I’ve listed above, I think the one I would be most likely to try to make at home is alivanca. I’ll add it to my “An American Attempts Foreign Recipes” series if I give it a go!

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