Erik Aker

From bold installations to guided tours and hands-on workshops, San Diego Design Week runs Sept. 17-21, offering free ways to experience the region’s most creative design moments.

Watch Saturday, Sept. 20, 2025 at 1:30 p.m. on KPBS TV / Stream with KPBS+ and YouTube. Christopher Kimball travels to the Saxon villages of Transylvania with author Irina Georgescu to learn the secrets of Romanian baking. Back at Milk Street, we make Romanian Creme Fraiche Cake (Lichiu), a sweet yeasted dough with a lemony filling and a custard topping; a new spin on apple pie, Romanian Apple Pie with Cinnamon and Walnuts; and last but not least, Meringue-Topped Cake with Cherries.

The best recipe you’d never heard of is...Romanian meringue-topped cake! This is our riff on the ethereal, parchment-wrapped cake prăjitură cu rubarbă, which Chris first encountered in Transylvania, at the culinary mini-farm HOF Hărman. There, Corina Bozgali and Ioana Gherghel blanketed a meringue-studded sheet cake in a layer of snowy meringue, creating the opposite of the dark, heavy, booze-soaked brick that comes to mind when you read or hear “fruit cake”—it was just a simple yellow cake that was topped with pieces of rhubarb before baking.

The Best Recipe You’ve Never Heard of is...Romanian Crème Fraîche Cake! Or, lichiu, the best dessert Chris tried on his trip to Romania. Imagine a delicate, lightly-sweet cheesecake with the flavor of a mild lemon bar, atop a yeasted brioche-like dough.