HODGDON, Maine – Elly Dulinsky adds her own touch and a special secret ingredient to the European pastry recipes, dating back to the 16th century, she uses in her home-based bakery.
“I am developing my own recipes. There are so many ways to make croissants,” said Dulinsky, who owns Elly’s European Sweets, based in Hodgdon. “A European recipe always has a special secret ingredient.”
Dulinsky grew up in Romania under dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu’s oppressive regime that ended in the 1989 revolution. She talks about living under the darkness of communism and how when she came to America in 2011, the level of U.S. freedom was a shock to her.
In school, children only learned about Romania and she never knew freedom like in the United States existed, she said. Foods like bananas or pineapples were not part of their diet and it wasn’t until she was 10 that she tasted her first banana.
Food rationing meant that most cooks had to invent recipes on limited supplies, and some of the sweets she shares are made with lard, jams for sweetening and only a sprinkling of confectioner’s sugar for beauty.
At the recent International Food Festival in Houlton, Dulinsky made one of those special Romanian pastries for tasting.
“I worried Americans might not like it, but they loved it,” she said. “Nobody believed that it was made with lard, they thought it was butter. It’s a European thing to work with shortening or lard or other special ingredients like caraway seeds.”
By secret ingredient, Dulinksy really means an unexpected ingredient, because by Maine health law she must list all ingredients for her sweets, she said.
As a teen, Dulinsky, 46, went to Santa Maria de Maggiore and the Restaurante Locarno in Northern Italy to live and work and that’s where she learned about making elaborate pastries.
“They gave me the croissant recipe I have saved all these years,” Dulinksy said.
While in Italy, she started corresponding online with an American soldier, thinking they were merely friends.
“But he came to Italy to see me and we fell in love,” she said, explaining that they met in 2008 and were married on her parents’ farm in Romania in 2009.
But it would be two more years before she would come to America.
“Romania was an ex-communist country, but the roots of communism were still there and they were not allowing people to get out of the country,” she said. “I needed almost two years to wait for my visa.”
When she left Romania to be with her husband in Arkansas, she left everything behind except for one suitcase and journeyed to her new life.
Throughout it all she never stopped baking and her love of creating special foods stayed with her, she said.
My husband asked me, “Elly, what do you want to do? What do you love to do? And I said ‘baking.’ And he said, ‘then do it.’”
As part of her recipe creation process, she first explores the history of her recipes to learn about the myths and legends associated with the sweets she loves to bake.
For example, she tells the tale of her Lemony Madeleines that were invented in France.
While there are many tales about their history, the one Dulinsky shares dates to the 16th century about a woman who did not have many pans to bake with, she said.
The woman’s husband was gone fishing for a long time and in her loneliness she went to the sea and gathered shells. When she returned home to make a sponge cake, a piece of the dough fell into the shell and that’s how she first baked the famous shell-shaped treats, she said.
Dulinsky’s Madeleine’s are light and richly flavored, topped with a lemon glaze.
She is currently perfecting Pogăci cu jumări, a Romanian flaky pastry that contains pork cracklins and is topped with cumin seeds.
“Who would think pork cracklins or cumin seeds,” she said. “With my own recipes I want to have my own little secret ingredient that nobody will think about.”
Then there is her Italian tiramisu, which she said was first created in the 17th century when someone was trying to assassinate the Duke through dessert but mixed up the vial of poison with rum.
“I would like to eventually put the stories with each sweet,” she said.
Dulinsky is working toward offering a dessert from every country in Europe, including croissants, strudels and her famed Madeleines.
Her husband, Tom Dulinsky, a Customs and Border Protection agent, was transferred from Texas to the Houlton Sector about 15 months ago. When the family first moved to Hodgdon, Elly Dulinksy worked for about seven months at Houlton Middle High School in the cafeteria, but then started putting her pastry business together.
The Northern Maine Develpment Commission and Jacob Pelkey, entrepreneur program director, helped her get started, apply for a grant and connect her with an expert who is going to help her price her pastries, which is complicated, she said.
Elly’s European Sweets was recently licensed by the health department and Dulinksy , began selling pastries in June.
Currently, she is working on perfecting a recipe for apple strudel and is working with downtown businesses, A Different Point of Brew and Cooks on Main to sell her pastries. She also sets up each week at the Hodgdon Farmer’s Market.
Her dream is to one day open a small European-style corner cafe for special coffees like espresso and pastries like she has experienced in Europe.
“If your heart is calling you, go for it,” she said. “Don’t let the fear stop you from trying something and then you will regret, you did not try. “
This story was updated to clarify that by secret ingredient Dulinsky means unexpected ingredient.
