From French Shores to Turkey: Chocolate Desserts to Other Sweet Pasries Around the World

Doughnuts, puff pastries to croissants, there are many pastries sweet in nature and have different names in different countries. These use the yeasted dough to baking powder stretched and kneaded to different thicknesses and shaped into spheres, rings and thin layers to be home to some deliciously sweet fillings. We take you through some of the most notable ones from sophisticated French ones to the phyllo sheet pastries making the special sweets of Turkey and Greece.

1. Pain au chocolat

This one's a French viennoiserie roll, a delicious chocolate dessert, that is rectangular in shape and filled with sweet chocolate, either ganache or plain chocolate. The pain au chocolat dough is made filled with chocolate and baked and once it's done the outer layer turns crispy, puffy and a little crunchy. It's best eaten warm and found in all French boulangeries and another name of this pastry is chocolatine, used in southwest France. The infamous French haughtiness is seen in some cities like Bordeaux, where if you ask for pain au chocolate instead of chocolatine, you end up paying more. You'll face an even more dire case of you call it a chocolate croissant.

2. Kanelbulle

A Swedish sweet pastry roll, that is similar to cinnamon rolls, Kanelbulle has a strong flavour of cardamom with hints of cinnamon and is quite buttery. It usually has pearl sugar on top, sugar mixed with cardamom or slivered almonds. Sweden is known for its fika or coffee break and the Kanelbulle is often during this time. It's even celebrated on 4 October that's called Cinnamon Roll Day.

3. Paris-Brest

From one of the dessert innovation centres of the world comes the Paris-brest which was created by chef Louis Durand in 1910. It was created to celebrate the Paris-Brest-Paris long-distance cycling race whose route passed his pastry, which is located in Maisons-Laffitte. It's a ring pastry that is supposed to resemble the bicycle wheel, minus the spokes. It's made with pâte à choux, an airy and hollow pastry sprinkled with fleur de sel and decorated with ample sliced almonds. This whole ring is baked until golden and like a bagel it's slit horizontally and filled with praline cream made with almond mousseline and hazelnut.

4. Sfogliatella

One of the most famous Italian pastries, Sfogliatella is mostly associated with Naples, although it has many regional varieties, the essence remains the same. The first Sfogliatella was said to have been made at the Amalfi coast in the 1700 by nuns from the Santa Rosa monastery. Their version had the pastry filled with custard and black cherry preserve. Somehow a Neapolitan chef found the recipe for the Sfogliatella and it was introduced to the world. There are many varieties that differ mostly in the dough; there's the Sfogliatella riccia or frolla and also the coda d’aragosta, which uses pastry cream and means lobster’s tail.

5. Profiteroles

The French version of cream puffs, Profiteroles are puff pastries which have a filling of either custard, pastry cream, whipped cream or vanilla ice cream. It is usually covered in chocolate. It is said to have been created by chefs in France and also southern Germany who created it back then filling it with cheese and herbs. By the 1600s as dessert-making boomed the cheese gave way to the modern filling starting with pastry cream. They earned their name around the 1850s and were made in a way to resemble pyramids or swans.

6. Katmer

Part of the wide range of sweet pastries in the country and its neighbours, Katmer is from Turkey’s Gaziantep, known for its pistachios. It is made with flour, sugar, a little salt and stuffed with kaymak, a local clotted cream and minced pistachios. It’s eaten as a breakfast item with tea or coffee and there's a local custom where newlyweds consume it on their wedding night to signify the sweetness they wish to find in their marital life. They are sold in most Turkish bakeries from morning till noon and often eaten with a little honey drizzled on them.

7. Wienerbrød

A classic part of Sunday breakfast in Denmark the Wienerbrød or Danish pastry is a crispy treat that is made with folded dough and has the feel of a puff pastry. Said to have been created by Austrian bakers hired by the country during the Baker's strike in 1850, this move brought the unique laminated dough, with more butter in it, to the country. It comes in a wide range of fillings from apples, raspberry, custard, and almond paste all of which are region-specific. The fillings also vary with the season, cinnamon is associated with winter, and fresh fruits during summer. It's usually decorated with almond flakes and a lemon drizzle.