The Most Unique Pastries You Need To Try At Least Once

For truly authentic martabak, you'll have to head to Indonesia. SBS calls it "street food's finest," and while you might find these pastries made to be either sweet or savory, you should know they're made in very different ways. While a savory martabak starts with a thin, pan-fried wheat dough — something akin to a quesadilla — the sweet martabak is completely different.

For sweet martabak, the dough and resulting pastry is much thicker than its savory cousin. Imagine a sweet, eggy pancake, baked in a skillet, and topped with fillings like butter, chocolate, peanuts, and sesame seeds. It's then taken off the heat, sliced in half, and sandwiched around the filling. Other versions might use fillings like Nutella or use red velvet flavors in the pancake, but whichever way you slice it, it's downright delectable.

Sekerpare is a dessert that would have anyone from Turkey nodding knowingly. According to The Spruce Eats, they're a staple pastry that's found in nearly every bakery in the country, and it's no wonder: they're delicious. They're essentially sweet cookies that are baked, but that's not the end of the process. Once they're golden brown, they're left to soak in a lemon syrup — and the longer they're left, the better they are. Unlike the "cookies" that someone from the west might think of, these are soft pastries you can cut and eat with a fork. 

Delicious, right? There's one more important component, and that's semolina flour, which is made from durum wheat. According to Bob's Red Mill, semolina has "a more earthy aroma" compared to other variations on wheat flour, making it the perfect thing to balance that lemony sweetness.

November 11 is an important date in Poland, as not only is it the national Independence Day, but it's also St. Martin's Day — and that's where the pastry comes in. According to Atlas Obscura, an estimated 700,000 of these special croissants are made and eaten on this day alone! These flaky pastries have a layer of paste made from nuts (particularly almonds), sugar, butter, and poppy seeds spread between each of the 81 layers. 

That's right, 81 layers! According to the legend retold by Taste is Yours, the pastry first appeared at the end of the 19th century. It was created by a baker who, having just listened to a sermon about acts of charity, decided to create a pastry specially made for the less fortunate. The shape was inspired by the story of St. Martin and his horse, who lost a horseshoe as they were riding along, inspiring the pastry's shape. 

As fans of The Great British Baking Show may already know, the Bakewell tart comes from the UK. Supposedly, it's named for the Derbyshire town where it was invented but, according to HistoryExtra, the modern pastry that's so popular across England is a far cry from the original pudding that was invented in Bakewell.

Today, Bakewell tarts are basically tiny treats that look like mini pies. They're made with shortcrust pastry, with an almond-flavored layer that covers the bottom, itself topped with another layer of fondant. The whole thing is topped with a glace cherry. The treats are wildly popular, and it's no wonder why. Bakewell tarts as they're served today are soft, nutty, and not overwhelmingly sweet, which makes them pretty much perfect for serving alongside a cup of tea.

It's time to head to Canada for the delicacy that is the beaver tail. Yes, they do look very much like the tail of a beaver, but don't fret. Beaver tail pastries are inspired by the old fur trader practice of cooking actual beaver tails over open fires. Fortunately today, no actual beavers are harmed in the making of these pastries. 

According to Culture Trip, the beaver tail can be thought of as a Canadian take on the donut. It's a wide, flat piece of hand-stretched dough that's deep-fried and covered with all kinds of sweet goodies that can include things like frosting and candy to cream cheese and everything in between.

Unlike many pastries, beaver tails are a fairly recent invention. They only really came onto the scene in the late 1970s and early 1980s. But, ask anyone who's had one and they'll say these beaver tails are here to stay.

The best way to describe the French pastry known as the tarte tatin is with a little imagination. Imagine, if you will, an apple tart. The crust is delicate and flaky, the apples are soft and covered in caramel. Now, imagine if you baked it upside-down. That way, the pastry gets extra crispy and the apples grow extra soft. That, says National Geographic, is the tarte tatin.

The dessert's name comes from the Tatin sisters who are credited with first making it at a hotel nestled in the forests of Sologne, France. While it's generally said to have been created by accident, it has, over the years, been modified in a number of delightful and delicious ways. You might find it made with a different fruit, a dash of brandy, or some extra seasonings, but it's the classic that's a true must-try.

According to Atlas Obscura, the creator of the xuixo wasn't a baker at all, but an acrobat. He became widely known in the Catalonian city of Girona for his performances before plague victims, and along the way, he happened to fall in love with the daughter of a pastry chef. Their secret romance was discovered when the acrobat sneezed while hiding in the bakery. There's a happy ending, though. The acrobat got to marry the girl and gave his new father-in-law a new pastry recipe in thanks. That was the xuixo, named for the sound of that fateful sneeze.

The pastry itself is a delicate, deep-fried pocket of sugar-coated goodness that's also filled with a cream pastry. Better yet, it's also the star of an annual festival called Marxa del Xuixo, an occasion that's used to raise money for Girona's cancer patients.

Running a successful business is as much about finding a target market as it is about creating a great product. According to Atlas Obscura, some incredibly enterprising bakers in 19th century France struck, well, gold with their new pastry.

At the time, the Paris stock exchange sat on Rue Saint-Denis. An area pastry chef decided to take a medieval recipe created by the Sisters of the Order of the Visitation and give it a bit of a makeover. The nuns' recipe for little round, nutty cakes were turned into bars — the shape of precious metal ingots — and renamed "financiers" after the investors in the neighborhood.

It wasn't just area bankers who loved the simple, spongy, nutty, golden pastries. All of Paris started clamoring for the treats. Today, some versions of financiers include chocolate in the batter, while others might even come with candied ginger or poached prunes in the mix. That's all wonderful, but it's the original — often served with sorbet — that's still the best for many dessert fanciers.

Chances are pretty good that anyone who lives in or has visited Texas is already familiar with the kolache. That's because a swatch of rural Texas was settled by an influx of Eastern European immigrants in the 1880s. When they came, they brought this delicious, sometimes-sweet, sometimes-savory pastry with them. 

Kolaches are traditionally Czech pastries, says Texas Monthly. Many of the bakeries that are making them today include a sweet fruit filling (meanwhile, traditionalists say that meat-based fillings are just morally wrong). If you want something super traditional, those are fillings made with ingredients like prune, apricot, and cream cheese. NPR says that as kolaches spread across the US, they changed shape a bit. Today, you might find some that are square and some that are round, but no matter how you shape them, they're just yummy.

The Saigoneer describes the banh pia as a Chinese-influenced Vietnamese pastry that's long been linked to worship of the moon during the Mid-Autumn Festival. It's shaped a bit like a hockey puck and made from a crust that's similar to a puff pastry, but is actually made from two very different types of dough arranged in super thin layers.

Cut one of these popular little pastries in half and you'll see a creamy yellow filling that's almost the color of dark lemon curd and looks like it might have the texture of custard. It is, indeed, creamy, but that filling is actually a mixture of caramelized lard, mung bean paste, rice flour, and the famously stinky durian! Sure, durian is notoriously smelly, but some people really enjoy its flavor. Want to try durian? This might just be the way to do it!

Way back in 1996, Austria celebrated a birthday. They'd officially been calling themselves Austria for an impressive 1,000 years. In honor of the occasion, the Los Angeles Times took a look at one of their most popular pastries, the buchteln.

What's a buchteln? Imagine a brioche roll, but imagine the same flavor and texture, but lighter and less buttery. Today, they're typically served on a plate with cream sauce, and if they're left to soak up the sauce before the lucky diner digs in, then they're even better. Inside is a little center of filling that's most traditionally apricot or even prune, but that's a fairly recent addition to the pastry... in the grand scheme of things, of course. At one time, it was lottery tickets that were baked inside, giving the pastries their old name: "lotteries."

Popovers have been a staple of New England cuisine for a long time, at least since the 19th century, says Atlas Obscura. That's when settlers from Europe brought along the idea of a Yorkshire pudding and made it into something completely different and still wonderful.

So, what exactly are popovers, and what does Jordan Pond have to do with it? As for the pastry, Downeast describes them as light, eggy, custardy rolls that are more air than pastry. They rise a little like a soufflé — and they're just as difficult to master — but it's McIntire's tea house that's perfected them. The tea house first opened its doors in 1895. The rebuilt inn (the first burned down in 1979) still sits on the shores of Jordan Pond in Maine and serves around 2,500 of these popular pastries, along with butter and strawberry jam, each and every day during tourist season.

Cinnamon rolls are wildly popular, and there's a good reason for that. Anyone who makes a beeline for Cinnabon but has never tried the glorious creations that are southern butter rolls definitely needs to add these to their bucket list. 

So, what are they? According to Kitchn, southern butter rolls seem to have originated in the Mississippi Delta. They're a variation of cinnamon rolls in that they're made with biscuit dough and rolled with a familiar mixture of cinnamon, sugar, and other spices, but that's where the similarity ends. They're then covered in a custard mixture and baked into a delicious pastry that caramelizes as it bakes, creating a sort of ultimate cinnamon roll that's a super-rich dessert that's a staple on countless southern dinner tables.

Italy Magazine calls sfogliatelle the must-try pastry of Naples, and it's no wonder. It's a light, delicate, and delicious pastry consisting of flaky layers, a cream filling, a fruit topping, and powdered sugar.

There are a variety of different types of sfogliatelle, and while it's not clear just where the pastry originated, we do know it's been around for centuries. One version of the pastry's history links it to a dessert made by the nuns of the Santa Rosa convent in the 18th century. What made it truly special was a secret ingredient they also made themselves: lemon liqueur. The sfogliatelle made today are just as labor-intensive and time-consuming as they were centuries ago, which makes it a true labor of love you can experience in the final product.

According to Atlas Obscura, the story of this monstrous pastry goes back to the 1920s, the Peruvian city of Lambayeque, and a baker who decided she was going to super-size a popular treat called the alfajor. In this original form, the alfajor was basically dulce de leche sandwiched between two cookies. The "King Kong" is, naturally enough, a huge variant of alfajores.

It's still made as it once was, with layers of cookies and fillings that are usually strawberry or pineapple-flavored. And the name? The King Kong movie hit theaters in 1933, and so it wasn't long before locals started calling the massive pastry King Kong, too. It's no wonder, either. The standard King Kong has seven layers and weighs nearly two pounds, although the record-holder is currently a 2,000-pound incarnation of this massive pastry.

Head to Peru, and you'll undoubtedly get the chance to sample one of their most famous street foods: picarones. These pastries are often called Peruvian donuts, but they're nothing like the American version. Instead, they're made with sweet potato and pumpkin, deep-fried, then covered in honey.

It's thought these ancient treats go all the way back to the Inca, who used some of the same ingredients to make their sweet treats. Once the Spanish arrived in the New World, the flour they brought with them was added to the mix. The melding of ingredients was so popular that many families developed their own recipes and versions that have since been handed down through the generations. Today, they're sold by street vendors all over the country, who are serving them up while still piping hot.