Sarokház is corner house in Hungarian. A corner house is shaped like a slice of cake. The most famous corner house is probably the Flatiron building in New York. The popular Hungarian dessert constructed from a slice of cake and completely covered with whipped cream is also sarokház i.e. corner house. Hungarian coffee houses assemble their sarokház from either chocolate, Stefánia or Dobos torts. On one of our first dates in 1967 my husband to be took me to an elegant coffee house in Budapest for espresso and sarokház. There is nothing like sarokház to put Zsuzsa into a sweet mood.
Keep in mind Hungarian cakes are no two egg wonders or made from cake mix. The start is a generous slice of tort. Assemble it just before serving. Use whipping cream with the highest possible fat content. Adding a bit of “whip it”, an Oatker stabilizer, helps too. There are instant whipped creams in pressurized cans on the market; some claim from real cream. But none of these products are stable enough to assemble a sarokház. I tried it, they just slip slide around and collect in a puddle around the cake.
Sarokház may have been invented to use up leftover tort. Hence the generic name and the fact that no pastry chef stamped his name on it. Simply cover a slice of tort with sweetened whipped cream and pipe more cream along the edge to reinforce its wedge form.
Start with a generous slice of tort
Cover the slice with sweet whipped cream.
Pipe along the edges to reinforce the wedge form.
That's all there is to it.
