Each time I travel to another place, be it a city or rural area, I fall in love and take on some new recipes from that specific region. This time, after many years I have visited my birth place Sandzak, the region of South-West Serbia. Surprisingly, many things changed after not seeing my birth town – Novi Pazar for almost ten years. The downtown area of Novi Pazar has transformed into a walking zone, with newly constructed Sebilj (oriental style water fountain) in the middle of main square. The town grew rapidly especially its industrial area. The novelties and nuances also happened in area of cuisine. The old traditional meals like meat pies, mantije, cevapi are still regularly on the table. However, some typical Balkan specialties have undergone changes. Interestingly, the cuisine same as language always develops, transforms and sort of lives *the life of its own*. For instance, popular Sandzak pastry meal *obarusha* is served now in restaurants in a much lighter version, with buckwheat and light cheese. This lighter versions of heavy traditional meals are great inventions and ways to protect health, but also enjoy old delicious recipes.
At present, the one of most popular cakes served in all great coffee shops and cake stores in Novi Pazar is so called milk cake *treleches*, in translation three-milk cake. My family from Sandzak says that *treleches* is originally an Albanian specialty/treat. Some people even say that this desert originates from the far South America. Despite the origin, it is very much loved by all, children and adults. Anyways, this milk desert won the hearts of the Balkans, as it is often served in Macedonia, Monte Negro, Kosovo, Serbia, Albania etc.
Few years ago, I have tried *treleches* for the first time in Bosnia where I reside, but I was not impressed. With my recent visit to Sandzak I have concluded that our neighbors are making it much better, perhaps because it is their specialty after all. This delicious melting in mouth treat totally stands out from other deserts in cake shops. Moreover, every better food store in Novi Pazar downtown, sells a ready-made mixture for preparing treleches yourself at home. Due to a short expiration date, this cake cannot last long in fridge- a few days at the maximum. But this is not the problem with being delicious as it is, it disappears fairly quickly.
After coming back home, for the first time I made the three-milk cake from the ready-made mixture (photos attached). Next time I will make it from scratch and that would be a much bigger challenge compared to the half ready- made version. The important tips I have thus far for the sucessful treleches cake, is not to make the cake too high so that milk absorption goes well, and also use some semolina for making the cake dough as light as possible.
I am leaving you a little task. Please comment bellow do you prefer milk deserts or deserts in sugary syrup /sut yada agdali tatlilar –in Turkish. Not an easy decision for cake lovers!
https://www.coolinarika.com/recept/972345/
Re-published from blog Cokoholic