Bear Paws (Medvedie Labky)
Ingredients: 1 yolk, 280g flour (about 2 cups), 220g margarine, 100g ground walnuts, 100g powdered sugar, 1 packet of vanilla sugar (about 20g), chocolate for cover (optional)
Prep Time: 1 hour
Bear paws (medvedie labky) is a cookie that is an integral part of any Christmas table in Slovakia. Although Slovakia is known for its kolache (koláče), elaborate sweet deserts found in cukráreň, the pastry shop, this type of a sweet is called krehké pečivo, meaning fragile baked good. It’s quite simple to make, however you’ll need baking molds. The form most commonly used is in the shape of a crescent moon, which may also be the shape of a rožok, or a bread roll. For this reason, this desert is sometimes also known as vanilkové rožky or vanilla rolls. I am not sure where the name bear paw comes from. Perhaps the original molds had such a shape?
Combine 280g of flour (múka, slightly more than 2 cups) and one 20g packet of vanilla sugar (vanilkový cukor). Also add 220g of margarine (margarín), 100g of powdered sugar (práškový cukor) and 100g of ground walnuts (mleté orechy). You should also add one yolk (žĺtko), but we were out of eggs. So we substituted by adding little bit of milk (mlieko).
Without adding water, mix the ingredients together to make dough. The margarine should be sufficient to emulsify everything, but if not, add just a hint of water or milk.
Take your baking forms and grease them lightly with oil (olej). One dip of the pastry brush in oil will be sufficient for at least half a dozen forms. Then dip each in a bowl containing flour. Shake off the excess flour – you want to coat them just lightly.
Take a small chunk of the sticky dough and spread it evenly in the form. It’s better not to fill all the way to the rim.
Bake on the bottom rack of an oven preheated to some 375F. Bake for about 8 minutes, turning around half way. They are done when they start turning brown. The picture on the right shows my grandma removing the cookies from the metal forms right after they came out of the hot oven! She must have major calluses on her fingers from all these years of cooking and baking that keep her from getting burned. Please wait for the forms to cool before removing the cookies.
Lightly coat each rožok in powdered sugar. Shake off any excess sugar. This is optional, but you can dip the ends in melted chocolate. To prepare the sauce, melt butter, powdered sugar and baking chocolate in a pot submerged in another pot containing water. This double pot technique is used to keep the chocolate from getting burned.
If you need more chocolate, you can add ground cocoa (kakao).
Then dip the ends and place in a cool place to allow the chocolate to set. You can also combine two pieces together. Sometimes two pieces are joined with a cream made out of milk (200mL), flour (3 tablespoons), yolk, vanilla sugar (1 packet), margarine (200g) and powdered sugar (200g). We did not bother with this step, since these guys are tasty even without the filling. But I did make one piece filled with chocolate. If you decide to prepare the cream filling, mix the margarine and the powdered sugar into the cooled mixture of the other ingredients.
And that’s it. Quite easy, isn’t it? This is one of my favorite Slovak sweet treats.
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Do you have experience baking these in America? Please let me (and other visitors) know your tips or hints. How easy is it to find baking forms? And have you tried baking these without the form, like regular cookies? How did they turn out? Thanks!
These (medvedie labky)are my x-mass favorites..I bake them every year here in Australia..I got those tiny forms send to me from Slovakia as I could not find anything like it here ..
Margarine? Not very old fashioned. How about sweet butter?
I wonder where one can find the vanilla sugar if there are no Eastern European stores in your neighborhood.
Hi Karen, I think you can find ground vanilla in most grocery stores. So just use that and add more sugar.
I use this recipe for Bear paws:
2 sticks of unsweetened butter (Land O Lakes)
2 packets pre-melted Nestles unsweetened choco or 2 tbs cocoa powder.
3/4 cup sugar
2/3 cup ground walnuts
1 1/4 cup flour
vanilla
No water,milk or eggs.
Combine evrything together. Do not grease tints, fill them half way and bake in 250F until they turn brown. Take them out of oven, let cool for few minutes and flip tints over, cover cookies with sugar.
I live in Turkey & have have also eatten Slovak food which is very tasty..could you tell me if you have a recipe called Hurma Titsa…its almost the same kind of dough like the Bear Claw but is cut out into circles and then folded over & baked & then when it comes out of the oven they are immersed into hot sugar water..they soak it all up…Do you have a recipe for this…maybe has a different name..thank you
Any idea where the forms can be found in the US? Perhaps an online store? I’ve had no luck finding them. Any help would be appreciated
Great recipe!
Hey Stephanie, don’t know of any one place, but I just checked on Amazon, and you can find all kinds of molds there, for instance see http://www.amazon.com/b?ie=UTF8&node=289716.
Also, you can also try visiting the Slovak Import Company, http://www.slovakic.com. They carry all sorts of Slovak trinkets.
And if you are really interested I could probably bring you some next time I go back to Slovakia
I once found them at Home Goods.
Lubos:
Thank you so much for the links! I will def. check them out!!! Also thanks for the offer. I may be going there in Dec. but if I don’t, I might just take you up on the offer!
[...] of a whole family of cookies baked in molds. For example, Lubos pointed me to this recipe for Medvedie Labky (bear paws). The dough is very similar to the Kosicky, but it is made in crescent shaped cookie [...]
I grew up in Ohio. I grew up Slovak on my dad’s side and always remembered these and of course, tons of kolache! My Grandma also made a desert with apricots and were cut into squares…but can’t remember what they were called. Anybody know what this might be? It was a soft desert and always went fast!
Hi Lyle, a friend from Slovakia sent in a recipe for her mom’s apricot cake, http://www.slovakcooking.com/2010/recipes/apricot-cake-marhulovy-kolac/. Is this at all like what you remember?
hello lubos, i just read your comments to this recipe and couldn’t miss your wonder where the name bear paws came from, personally i think is from the shape of the most common moulds use for this sweet treat… i remember when i was small that the shape of moulds my grandma and my mum used most was the madeleine shape which you used for your recipe for walnuts (oriesky). The shape of madeleine look a like a paw, and is christmas sweet which means white for us which is the sugar coating and overall it does remind you bear paws when you look at this finished sweet… as the time went pass you could get more different shapes of moulds for this xmas treat… in my family for example vanilla rolls (vanilkove rozky) and bear paws could not be mistaken as vanilla rolls looked exactly like yours bear paws which been dipped in chocolate on ends but of course without the nuts they had white color dough and ours bear paws been always only coated in icing sugar. I come from Bojnice/Prievidza region not that far from your birth place Banska Bystrica and it is surprising me that we call and do certain things different to yours region. Or it could be also the family tradition that vary… do you know grilazove rezy/grilazky (caramel-nuts waffles)? I just made them couple of days back, this is one of very popular christmas/celebration sweet on our table… i haven’t eat it for years as is hard to get proper tortove oplatky (big torte waffles) and Cera (shortening) here in uk, especially in part where i live… eventually got them from slovakian shop in birmingham with all others slovakian goodies
))) they came out very well and tasted just as the ones at home 
))) they went very quickly as well 
)))
the emoticons messed up… meant to be them
Recept na grilážové rezy.
http://www.akosatorobi.sk/video/1275/grilazove-rezy-recept-na-cokoladovo-orechove-rezy
I made some madeleines recently and my born in Slovakia wife said the shape reminded her of these bear paws. The shape reminds me of sea shells. Of course, the madeleine recipe uses a cake batter but I will try this recipe and use the madeleine mold (12 at a time).
I live in USA and I found the molds at Home Goods.