MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
And I think we should take a short break for some important dessert news. Have you ever been munching on a doughnut and thought this would be so much better if it was filled with hot fudge, ice cream and nuts? Well, if you are in the Czech Republic, you can have that. And it's causing a commotion online. NPR's Jasmine Garsd investigates.
JASMINE GARSD, BYLINE: There's this new dessert taking over the city of Prague. I'm talking about trdelniks. I keep getting told it's pronounced kind of like turtleneck. But unlike turtlenecks, they're in style and filled with ice cream.
VLADIMIR NOVAK: (ph) The recipe is very old. It's about 200 years old.
GARSD: That's baker Vladimir Novak (ph) talking to me from Prague. He explains that trdelniks are actually at a traditional Czech cinnamon pastry in the shape of a tube. He says it kind of tastes like a doughnut.
NOVAK: And then we put nuts on it. It's very tasty.
GARSD: Novak says his bakery, Good Food Cafe, was the first to start filling trdelniks with ice cream. People went wild.
NOVAK: They're coming every day. And some of them coming in the morning and they're coming in the afternoon again. So if they are in Prague, I'm pretty sure that (unintelligible) is looking for one.
GARSD: People aren't just crazy for trdelniks in Prague. The dessert has gone viral on social media around the world, even though it's only available in the Czech Republic. Blogger Brianna Simmons, who writes The Casual Travelist blog, recently was walking through the streets of Prague when the smell of baking trdelnik from Good Food Cafe hit her with the force of a Czech tennis player covered in cinnamon.
BRIANNA SIMMONS: What really hits you first is the aroma. You get that whiff of slightly sweet caramelized cinnamon and sugars.
GARSD: She dedicated an entire blog post to it. She says that cone is like a mix of...
SIMMONS: A pretzel and then a cinnamon-sugar doughnut. And on the outside, the cinnamon and sugar has caramelized so you get a little bit of a crunch. And then it yields to a really soft, fluffy center. You can certainly get them dressed up. They get drizzled with chocolate, with Nutella.
GARSD: And if you're worried about freezing ice cream and fudge streaming down your sleeve in the middle of your romantic night in Prague, don't. Unlike their American cousin, the waffle cone, trdelnik cones don't dribble.
SIMMONS: They're not messy at all. It's a pretty good street food to have while you're walking through the cobblestone streets of Old Town, Prague.
GARSD: Novak says he's gotten offers to sell his cones around the world and would come to the U.S.
NOVAK: It would be nice to open one in New York or somewhere else.
GARSD: 'Til then, those of us who can't go to Prague will just have to sadly watch our Instagram feed and feel the unbearable lightness of doughnuts without ice cream. Jasmine Garsd, NPR News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
