Flame Cake (Flammkuchen)

Flammkuchen (German) or Tarte Flambée (French) is my number one dinner when I don’t feel like cooking. It’s quick, its preparation doesn’t produce any dirty pots or bowls and it’s so delicious. Flammkuchen is a speciality from the French region called Alsace and its surrounding areas – if you ever find yourself in Colmar or Strasbourg, which are both stunningly pretty towns, make sure you eat a Flammkuchen while there.

Despite being called a cake it’s not really a cake, it’s savoury and more like a pizza. The base is a yeast based bread dough and traditionally the topping consists of onions, bacon and sour cream. There are lots of variations out there with different toppings, but I like this traditional one best.

If you’re in Switzerland you can most likely find a ready-made dough called Flammkuchenteig in your supermarket. If you can’t, just use a ready-made pizza dough. Of course you can make your own, yeast based dough too, but for me this is my lazy, quick dinner, so making my own dough would defeat the purpose.

This is a great recipe for an Apéro, but served with a salad it works well as a dinner too. It tastes even better if you have a Riesling d’Alsace to accompany it!

Recipe for two people

  • 300g ready-made dough, either Flammkuchenteig or pizza dough
  • 150-200g of Crème Fraiche (sour cream)
  • 140g diced smoked bacon
  • 1 small onion, finely sliced

Method

Preheat oven to 240C.

Roll out dough on a baking tray covered with baking parchment.

Spread Crème Fraiche onto the dough. Sprinkle bacon and onion on top and season with salt and pepper.

Bake for 10 minutes or until the dough ends turns golden brown and crunchy.

2 thoughts on “Flame Cake (Flammkuchen)”

  1. Yum. I love Flammenkuchen! We ate some good ones in Strasbourg when we were there last year. Although, I must confess, even the ready-made ones taste pretty good and I can’t notice much difference, lol! 😉

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