Chocolate-Cream “Dumplings”

Peter, my Hungarian translator, had met me at a neighborhood café near my hotel and was taking me on a personal tour of the café’s glass dessert case, giving his picks and pans of the display. When he arrived at a bowl filled with scooped cake “dumplings,” layered with vanilla cream and topped with chocolate sauce and whipped-cream rosettes, he paused in reverence. It was Somlói Galuska (“Somló Dumplings”), named for a wine town near Lake Balaton, but a big-city dessert that is on th