Travel around four hours south by train from Vienna and you'll arrive in the picturesque mountain state of Carinthia. Known for its outstanding natural beauty, incomprehensible dialect, and penchant for far-right politics, Austria's southernmost state shares a border with Slovenia and is home to a sizeable Slovenian-speaking minority. This cultural exchange is part of the history of the state's most famous sweet export, the Kärntner Reinling (also spelt Reindling), the origin of which is shared between the Carinthians and the Slovenes going back to the sixteenth century. In its original form, the Reinling was a sweetened white bread spiked with fennel. Over the centuries, the Kärntner Reinling took on the form we know today: sweetened with honey, enriched with egg, studded with raisins and nuts, spiced with ground cinnamon. The Reinling name refers to the round pan in which the bread was shaped and baked, similar to a Viennese Gugelhupf, and indeed, hopefully I'm not overstepping the mark by saying that the Reinling is the Gugelhupf of Carinthia.
Making a good Kärntner Reinling starts with fresh yeast mixed with warm milk and a little sugar to form a Dampfl or starter. The ingredients for the dough are then incorporated into that starter: more sugar, more milk (and in some recipes, heavy cream (!)), flour, butter, egg, salt, and then seasonings like anise, rum, vanilla, and lemon zest -- or some combination thereof. Once the dough has been kneaded, rested, and all that fandango, it is rolled out to about one centimetre thickness, and to this sheet of dough, the filling is applied. Cinnamon and sugar are essential here; other additions like raisins and chopped walnuts are optional but obviously make for a more interesting Reinling at the end. The sheet of dough is then rolled up like a jelly roll, coaxed into a buttered bundt form, allowed to rest and rise again, and then baked in a 350 F oven for anywhere between one and one and a quarter hours -- a good while. Once cooled, the Reinling is ready to eat. Like a Gugelhupf, it is best consumed in the afternoon with a cup of coffee.
