Slovak food, recipes, culture, language lessons…

Ducat Cakes (Dukátové Buchtičky)

Couple of you have asked me for a recipe for dúkatové buchtičky. This is a dish I remember fondly from my childhood. It was a common staple in my elementary school cafeteria, along with ryžový nákyp, probably because they both can be made easily in mass quantities and are popular with kids since they are both sweet. In Slovakia, we have a number of sweet main dishes. This is something I don’t believe is common in the American cuisine. Some other examples include plum dumplings, cabbage flakes, noodes with poppy seeds, and apple bread pudding.

The name of this dish translates as “ducat little buchty”. Buchty are the Slovak traditional baked good. They are sort of like American cookies in that everyone makes them, and in that the recipe varies from grandma to grandma. Ducats on the other hand were the ubiquitous coins of the Europe from the Middle Ages. The picture on the right (from Wikipedia) shows one from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, of which Czechoslovakia was part of until the end of World War I. So these are basically little sweet cakes the size of dukáty. If this were an American dish, they would probably be called the silver dollar cakes…

Unlike the traditional buchty, which are filled with apricot jam or cottage cheese, these are not filled. Instead, they are soaked in a vanilla cream. This makes them somewhat similar to bobalky. In making this dish, I followed the recipe from mimibazar. I also found another recipe in one of the Slovak cookbooks I have, however, that recipe was for some fancier kind I am not familiar with that had layers of ground nuts.

Ingredients: 250g (1 3/4 cups) all purpose flour, 1.5dl (0.6 cups) milk, one packet yeast, 4 teaspoons (25g) sugar, 1 medium egg, 4 tbsp oil, pinch of salt
Cream: Milk, vanilla pudding mix
Prep Time: About 3 hours to let the dough rise and then about 45 minutes

Mix all the dough ingredients together until you get a smooth mixture.

Cover and let rise for few hours.

You will end up with a smooth dough. Transfer the dough onto a board dusted with flour and form into a loaf. Then cut into a number of slices. Take each slice between your palms and roll until you get a smooth cylinder.

Transfer the rolls onto a greased baking pan. Brush oil onto the outside side that will be touching another roll to prevent them from sticking. I also tried cutting out few buns with a circular cutter.

Next take a greased spatula and use it to make perpendicular cuts so that you end up with a small square buns. Let rise for about 30 minutes. In the meantime, preheat the oven to 375F. Bake for about 20 minutes.

While the dough is baking, prepare the cream. You could make vanilla cream from scratch by combining corn starch, milk, and vanilla sugar, however, I took the easy way and used one of the Jell-o cook-and-serve vanilla puddings. I didn’t measure the amounts but the important point is to use much less pudding mix than when making pudding so that you end up with thin cream instead of a thick pudding. To serve, separate the buns once they are cool enough to handle and add to the cream. Enjoy!

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