Karpatka is a traditional Polish cream pie with some sort of vanilla buttercream filling – aerated butter mixed with eggs beaten and steamed with sugar (krem russel)[1][2], aerated butter mixed with crème pâtissière (according to Polish gastronomy textbooks made from whole eggs)[2] or just thick milk kissel enriched with melted butter.

[5][6] The cake is cut into squares or rectangles and dusted with icing sugar.

[1][2] The dessert takes its name from the mountain-like pleated shape of the powdered choux pastry, which resembles the snowy peaks of the Carpathian Mountains – Karpaty in Polish.

[7] The origins of the desert are unclear; it most likely emerged at the turn of the 1950s and 1960s, but its popularity only became widespread in the 1970s and 1980s.

In 1995, "Karpatka" became a trademark registered for a company called Delecta for the determination of cream powder in the Polish Patent Office.