Recipe
🍰 DESSERT
Prekmurska Gibanica
A grand layered pastry of poppy seed, walnut, apple, and cottage cheese, Slovenia's most celebrated cake.
Slovenian · advanced · serves 12
prep 60 min · cook 60 min
~757 cal · 15g protein · 61g carbs · 52g fat · 4g fiber · 24g sugars · 24g sat fat (estimated, per serving)
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Prekmurska gibanica is Slovenia's most famous festive cake, from the Prekmurje region in the northeast, and holds protected status as a traditional speciality. Its name comes from an old word for fold or layer, and layering is its whole identity.
It is an ambitious construction of thin pastry interleaved with four distinct fillings, poppy seed, walnut, apple, and sweet cottage cheese, each in its own stratum, bound with cream and egg and baked until set. Rich, complex, and impressive when sliced to reveal its many bands, it is the centrepiece of Slovenian celebrations.
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Make it yours
✓ Naturally vegetarian and pork-free. No swaps needed.
Toggle a diet and the ingredients rewrite themselves with regional substitutes.
🥕 Vegetarian
🌱 Vegan
🌾 Gluten-Free
🥛 Dairy-Free
🥜 Nut-Free
🥚 Egg-Free
🐖 Pork-Free
Dietary labels are a cooking guide, not allergen-safety advice. We track dairy, egg, gluten, tree nuts and peanuts (we count coconut as a tree nut, following FDA labeling), fish, and shellfish; we do not screen for sesame, soy, mustard, celery, or sulphites. If you have a food allergy, read the label on every product you use, and note that a kitchen can cross-contaminate in ways a recipe cannot control.
Ingredients
US
Metric
Serves 12
1 lb phyllo pastry
1 cup ground poppy seed
1 cup ground walnuts
3 apples, grated
2 cups cottage cheese
3 eggs
1 1/2 cups sour cream
1 cup sugar
1 1/2 cups flour, for the shortcrust base
1 1/2 cups butter (for the base and for drizzling between layers)
2 tsp and 1 lemon cinnamon and lemon zest
Instructions
1
Make a shortcrust base: rub the butter into the flour with sugar and a pinch of salt, bind with an egg, and chill it 30 minutes.
✎ Chef’s note
The shortcrust base under the phyllo is part of the definition, not an optional extra. Gibanica is built on two doughs, a rolled shortcrust underneath and phyllo between every filling.
2
Prepare four fillings: ground poppy seed with sugar and cinnamon; ground walnuts with sugar and cinnamon; grated apple with sugar, cinnamon and lemon zest; and cottage cheese beaten with egg and sugar. Whisk the sour cream with an egg and a pinch of salt for the drizzling mixture.
3
Roll the shortcrust to fit a deep dish, prick it, lay a sheet of phyllo over it, and build the fillings in this order: poppy seed, cheese, walnut, apple, with a sheet of phyllo, a spoonful of the sour cream mixture and a drizzle of melted butter between each. Then repeat the whole sequence a second time.
✎ Chef’s note
The order is fixed and so is the repeat: poppy seed, cheese, walnut, apple, twice over, which gives the eight filling layers that define the cake. Prekmurska gibanica is protected in the EU as a Traditional Speciality Guaranteed, and a version that wanders from the ingredients or the order cannot legally carry the name. Drizzle butter as well as the cream mixture on every phyllo layer; that is what keeps it moist rather than dry and papery.
4
Finish with pastry and pour the remaining cream mixture over the top.
5
Bake at 350F (180C) for about an hour, until deep golden, then let it rest at least two hours before cutting.
✎ Chef’s note
It has to rest. Cut hot, the layers slide apart; given a couple of hours the fillings set and it slices into clean tiers. Serve warm or cold, dusted with a little icing sugar. The name comes from the dialect word güba, a fold, and the cake was first described in 1828 by a Prekmurje priest, Jožef Košič, as the thing no wedding could do without.
Slovenian Prekmurje tradition.
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🌏 While it simmers, know your destination
📍
Ljubljana. Struklji is a category rather than a recipe: the same rolled dough boiled, baked or steamed, filled with cottage cheese and tarragon, or walnut, or apple. Zganci is the other everyday thing, buckwheat cooked stiff and broken into lumps, once the breakfast of anyone working outdoors.
🗺️
Slovenia. Potica is the rolled cake that marks every occasion, yeast dough spread thin with a filling and coiled into a ring tin, with walnut the classic and tarragon the one that surprises outsiders. It holds EU protected status. Struklji are the savoury and sweet rolled dumplings, boiled or baked, and buckwheat zganci is the mountain porridge underneath a lot of the older cooking.
🌍
Europe. A surprising amount of European cooking is under five hundred years old. Tomatoes, potatoes, peppers, maize, beans and chocolate all crossed from the Americas after 1492, and none of them was trusted quickly: the potato took most of the eighteenth century to be accepted as food rather than animal fodder across much of the north.
The story behind this dish is up top, worth a read while the pot works.
More from Slovenia
JotaA Ljubljana stew of soured sauerkraut, borlotti beans, potato, and smoked pork, winter in a pot.
Ajdovi ŽganciRustic buckwheat "spoonbread" crumbles served with warm milk or cracklings, Slovenian comfort.
Kranjska KlobasaThe protected Carniolan sausage, simmered and served with mustard, bread, and sauerkraut, a Slovenian icon.
Browse all Slovenia recipes →
Good to know
You’ll need: Oven, Whisk.
Storing it: Store in an airtight container. Most keep 2 to 3 days at room temperature, and longer refrigerated.
Make it a Slovenia meal
Idrijski ŽlikrofiDinner
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Frequently asked questions
What is Prekmurska Gibanica?
A grand layered pastry of poppy seed, walnut, apple, and cottage cheese, Slovenia's most celebrated cake.
Where does Prekmurska Gibanica come from?
Prekmurska Gibanica is a Slovenian dish from Ljubljana, Slovenia.
Can Prekmurska Gibanica be made vegan, gluten-free, or dairy-free?
This Prekmurska Gibanica recipe includes substitution suggestions for vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free, dairy-free, nut-free, egg-free, and pork-free versions, including several at once such as gluten-free and dairy-free together. Treat them as a starting guide rather than a guarantee, and see the allergen note below.
Is Prekmurska Gibanica safe for people with food allergies?
Our dietary labels and substitutions are a cooking guide, not medical or allergen-safety advice. We track dairy, egg, gluten, tree nuts and peanuts (we count coconut as a tree nut, following FDA labeling), fish, and shellfish, but we do not screen for sesame, soy, mustard, celery, or sulphites. If you have a food allergy, always read the label on every product you use, and remember a home or commercial kitchen can cross-contaminate ingredients in ways a recipe cannot control.
How long does Prekmurska Gibanica take to make?
About 120 minutes total (60 minutes prep, 60 minutes cooking), serving 12.
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