Holiday

Bobalky (Opekance)

Ingredients: leavened dough or few days old bread rolls, ground poppy seeds, sugar, milk, butter
Prep Time: 5 minutes if you use old bread, about 2 hours otherwise

Integral part of the Christmas table in many Slovak families are little pieces of sweet bread known as bobaľky, opekance or pupáčky. They are typically topped with poppies (s makom), but some people eat them with farmer’s cheese (tvaroh) or even cabbage (kapusta). In this recipe I show you how to prepare this delicious desert.

Opekance are typically eaten as the third “course”. First, there is the prípitok, a shot of liquor. Then, the lady of the house (gazdina) passes around Christmas wafers (oblátky) with garlic (cesnak) and honey (med). Then come opekance followed by soup and the main meal. While garlic and honey are supposed to bring the person good health, poppies symbolize wealth. There is supposedly even a tradition which involves tossing them on the ceiling, but this is not something I am familiar with.

Although opekance are very traditional, they were not prepared in my family. I don’t remember ever having them while growing up. This is a shame, because they are delicious! So when I first decided to make them, I was not quite sure how they ought to taste. I found several recipes online, with some of them saying bobaľky should be baked few days ahead of time, and then allowed to completely dry up. They are then soaked in hot water until soft. This is the method I tried, and my first attempt ended up in a disaster. I left them in the water way too long, and they ended up soggy.

The good news is, none of this is necessary if you just want to prepare a tasty treat, and not stockpile them for winter. You prepare opekance from the same sweet leavened dough that is used for buchty or makovník. However (I have not tried this yet), I think you could get by just using few days old white bread, or bread rolls. Finally, you will need ground poppy seeds. You can find poppy seeds in most grocery stores, but finding a grinder is bit more complicated. However, most grocery stores sell poppy seed pie filling in the baking isle. You can use this instead, but the taste will be little different. The filling (at least the Solo brand I buy) tastes more like corn syrup than poppies.

Cutout a piece of dough (cesto) about the size of your palm and roll it into a cylinder about 3/4 inch thick. Using a knife or a similar circular dough cutting tool, cut slices about 1/4 inch thick. Place them onto a baking sheet (with the cut face down) and let rise for about 10 minutes. Preheat your oven.

Bake for about 15 minutes until they get golden brown. They’ll be just like freshly-baked sweet bread: crunchy on the outside and soft on the inside. Then combine, in a pot, ground poppy seeds (mletý mak), powdered sugar (práškový cukor), butter (masľo) and a bit milk (mlieko). Bring to boil and pour over the bread.

Mix together and enjoy. They were delicious!

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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 200F. 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 200F 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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Lokshe (Lokše)

Ingredients: 6 potatoes, cup of flour, oil, salt, sauerkraut or jam with poppy seeds
Prep Time: 30 minutes

An indispensable part of the Slovak kitchen are lokshe (lokše, lokša singular). They are thin pancakes made out of potato dough that are baked on a hot plate or an ungreased frying pan. They are kind of like Slovak tortillas. These will be found on any Christmas table! You will also find them offered at Christmas markets held in just about every town during the holidays. Today I am again at my grandma, so I watched as she prepared a batch. Follow the following easy steps to prepare this delicious and cheap Slovak treat at home.

Start by boiling unpeeled potatoes (zemiaky v kožke, potatoes in skin). Don’t boil them all the way, just long enough so that you can stick a fork in part of the way. Remove the skin, and grate them.

Then add about a cup of flour (múka) and a dash of salt (soľ). Work into dough.

Transfer onto a floured board, and roll into a tube some 2-3 inches in diameter. Cut out individual slices about an inch thick.

Then take each piece and transfer onto a floured section of the board. Sprinkle more flour on top. Pat it down a bit with your fingers and roll out with a short back-and-forth motion until you have a pancake some 1 or 2 millimeters thick.

Then bake on an ungreased frying pan, hot plate, or, like my grandma did, directly on her wood burning stove (šporák). Bake each side for few minutes, until they look done – they’ll get dark spots. Grease one side with oil (olej).

Fill with sauerkraut (kyslá kapusta) and roll into a pancake. Or, fold over and over again to make a little sachet.

I also convinced my grandma to try them filled with raspberry jam (malinový lekvár) and topped with poppy seeds with sugar (mak s cukrom), the way I had them in Bratislava on New Years. They are delicious like that, although my grandma wasn’t quite sold: Chutia ako palacinky (They taste like crepes) she said. Yes, the traditional way is to eat them with sauerkraut or cabbage.

You can also eat them plain. They are great like that as a light snack with tea or coffee. Lokše are typically eaten on Christmas after the traditional helping of kapustnica and fried carp. Lokše are also eaten on Good Friday.

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