Poppy Seed and Nut Roll (Makovník a Orechovník)
Ingredients: leavened dough, ground poppy seeds or walnuts, sugar, bit of milk
Prep Time: 30 minutes (if you already have the dough ready)
Once you have your dough ready, it’s quite easy to turn it onto the Slovak delicacies, the poppy and walnut rolls, makovník and orechovník. Or at least my grandma made it look really easy. These two pastries are identical to each other, except that they have different filling.
Start off by making the filling. For the poppy seed roll, you will need ground poppies (mletý mak). For this, you will need a poppy seed grinder (mlynček na mak). These work by pushing the poppies between a housing a spinning plate. You can find these online, so that’s probably the best place to start. Or, you can skip all these steps, and use the poppy seed cake filling found in the baking section. I personally don’t like it much, because I think it tastes more like corn syrup than poppies. We used 100g of poppies. This was not quiet sufficient, as you will see in the final product below. So err on the liberal side. You can never have too much of the good thing, right?
Add sugar (cukor) to taste and also few drops of milk (mlieko). You want the filling to have the consistency of thick sauce. My grandma also put it on the stove for few minutes to warm up.
The nut filling is made exactly the same way, except that you use ground walnuts (mleté orechy). Again, add sugar to taste and a bit of milk. Heat up the mixture on the stove.
Run over the dough few times with a rolling pin, and then use your hands to flatten it out some more. See the recipe for tvaroznik for photos of this step. Then top it with the filling. My grandma started off with the nut roll, orechovník. Lightly grease the top with oil.
Then grab one end of the dough “pancake” and roll it into a tube. Place it onto a greased baking pan, the rolled part to the bottom (the opposite of what is shown in the right photo, we flipped it before baking). I am using my finger here to give you an idea of scale.
Makovník (the poppy seed roll) is the made the same way, except you use the poppy seed filling.
Then lightly grease the top of each roll with a baking brush. Then set aside for few minutes to let rise.
My grandma’s cottage has only a wood burning stove. I found this really neat – cooking doesn’t get whole lot more traditional than this! Here is my grandma’s friend Paľo putting bit more wood in the stove. But for more modern kitchens, you want to heat up your stove pretty high, 400-425F. Bake the rolls for not even 30 minutes, turning around halfway. They are ready when the outside turns golden brown. You can reduce the heat once they start turning yellow. After you take them out, brush the tops with oil. This will soften the crust.
And there you have it. My grandma made it look so easy. As you can tell, the poppy seed roll is little skimpy on the filling. As I mentioned above, we didn’t make enough of it. These rolls are delicious with a cup of tea or coffee.
My mom’s family makes these (Hungarian). I’ve also made them myself, but mine aren’t as good as my aunt’s or my grandma’s.
my dedo would buy me one of these (orechovnik– i never knew the slovak name; he just called them ‘strudel’) every weekend when i came to visit. nobody ever bothered making them, because he liked any opportunity to go to the bakery to buy one and spend some time with other slovaks.
so thanks for the recipe–i look forward to being able to make one myself, since they cost a fortune in toronto. the blog is great.
You can find poppy seed already prepared in the grocery store. Or check on line for Solo brand foods, they make it and sell it.
Where can I find poppy seed in the United States? I’ve tried several times, but here the poppy is only a source of opium, not a food item.
Thanks
Nina
I don’t know where you live, but in Virginia, the Giant chain supposedly sells bagged poppy seeds in the bakery section. I haven’t tried that yet, but I have bought canned poppy seed pastry filling there, in the baking goods sections (flour, cake mixes, etc…). I also tried getting poppy seeds from an Indian spice shop, but all I found were some mysterious white seeds (see my recipe for plum dumplings).
You can order poppy seeds online at Penzey’s
You can find poppy seed in the cake isle of your grocery store or order it from the Solo Company.
My grandmother made these..she called them kolache (her parents were from Hungary. We also fill them with cream cheese, ground nuts, or an apricot filling.
This looks just like what my mother and grandmother made. It has been years since I last made it, something I have to change! I do agree, the poppy seed filling you purchase does NOT taste like it should – nothing can replace making your own!
As “Christi” said above, dear Dad always called this kolache. I remember always having it when visiting Baba and Dzedo. There is a cute story to tell about visiting them – will have to tell it later, as hubby and I are heading out the door.
Just found this website and am in LOVE with it! Thanks so much and I’ll see you all later!
Looking forward to your story! Kolache is a generic name for “sweet baked goodies”, so technically these are also “kolache”. But really, the term typically applies to cookie-type sweets.
my grandmother grew up calling these kolache as well, and her mother was from the part of Slovakia that was Hungary in the past. I have recently discovered that the dialect she speaks is an eastern one, not the same as the Slovak they teach in school, for example. Maybe kolache is the name of this in her dialect rather than a general term for the sweets.
My mother would make these very holiday. This past Christmas I tried my hand at them and I have to say my momma would have been proud.
My grandmother made these with nuts, poppy seed, and prune lekvar. The lekvar are my favorite, and I found a recipe in a Slovak cook book that works very well.