Chimney Sweet
by Nathalie Alonso
LONG ISLAND CITY — On the ground floor of a Jackson Avenue condominium complex in Long Island City, a centuries-old Hungarian-Transylvanian wedding treat has become a Queens novelty.
It’s here that Anna Kozma makes kurtoskalac, a yeast-based pastry produced by wrapping a strip of dough around a wooden pin and baking it over a fire. The result is a hollow, spiral cylinder that gives Kozma’s bakery, Chimney Cake NYC, its name.
“It’s not too sweet; it’s not greasy,” says Kozma, who takes pains to distinguish her pastry from the doughnut, which she considers the chimney cake’s commonplace cousin.
Before baking the cakes in a custom rotisserie-style oven from Hungary, Kozma, a native of Transylvania who has lived in Queens since 2002, rolls the dough in corn oil and sugar for a sweet, caramelized crust. Optional toppings, such as coconut or walnuts, can be added once the pastry is finished baking but still hot.
The recipe that inspired Kozma to open her shop last September is an heirloom; she belongs to a lineage of women she lauds as “great bakers,” among them her great-great-grandmother, who was alive when Kozma was a young girl. “When you grow up in a village, you grow up with this tradition, to make everything at home,” says Kozma.
According to Kozma, in Transylvania, the region in central Romania where chimney cakes originated, it is a centuries-old custom of Hungarian wedding-goers to arrive with the pastry, which is then served with homemade brandy.
Offering chimney cakes in Queens has reinforced what Kozma sees as her specialty’s universal appeal: “It’s a very traditional pastry for us, a unique pastry, but it’s not so ethnic like something like stuffed cabbage, which some people like and others can’t stand,” she says. “That’s what I enjoy very much.”