I was given my great-grandmother Niny’s handwritten cookbook a few weeks ago, and as I was flipping through the pages I was instantly drawn to her recipe for a ‘Tarte au Sucre’ – a Schuedi. I had been looking for a really good Schuedi recipe for ages! A Schuedi is a yeasted Brioche cake, dotted with butter holes and sprinkled with lots of sugar. It’s a very humble cake that has its origins in bakeries – where bakers’s found it ‘ze schued’ (a shame) to throw away leftover dough from tart making. So they would scrape all the bits of dough together, and push it in a tin with some butter flakes and sugar – so that it doesn’t go to waste. Like that, the Schuedi was made.

My great-grandmother Niny’s brother had a pâtisserie in town, pâtisserie Kündchen, so I suspect her baking skills were pretty good! However, I doubt that this recipe came from the pâtisserie, but who knows…

All I can tell you is that this is the best Schuedi I’ve ever made – and eaten in my life! It’s super pillowy and buttery and not dry at all. The yeasty flavour is very prominent, which I find incredibly satisfying. And it’s really not very sweet at all.

I’ve noticed a lot of interest when I posted the Schuedi on Instagram, so I suspect many of you are also on the hunt for a recipe of this humble Luxembourgish cake. Well, now you have the perfect one! Thank you Niny!