Dough: 2 cups (250g) flour, 1/2 teaspoon baking powder, 1/2 teaspoon salt, 1-2 yolks, 2 tablespoons (60g) powdered sugar, half a stick (50g) unsalted butter, 4 tablespoons cream, 2 tablespoons white wine (or rum), 1/2 cup of milk
Topping: powdered sugar, half pocket vanilla sugar (optional)
Prep Time: 2 hours

Start by combining flour, butter, sugar, yolks, cream, milk, baking powder, salt, and the wine (or rum if you prefer). Mix together for 10 minutes until you get smooth elastic dough. Add more milk if needed. Form into a ball, dust with flour, and let rest in the fridge for an hour.

Roll the dough out to thickness of about 1/6th of an inch. It may help to cut the dough into two halves, especially if your board is on the smaller side. Using a dough cutting wheel or a knife, cut the dough into rectangles about 2×3 inches. Then cut two slots in each rectangle in direction parallel to the shorter edges. Loop one end piece through the slot closest to it.

Then repeat with the other end to make a dough bowtie.

You can also just cut the dough into thin strips which you roll around your finger. Fry all this goodness in oil that is not too hot – I kept mine just a tiny turn past low. Fry on both sides until the dough gets pinkish light brown.

Scoop the fried fánky with spatula onto a plate covered with paper towels. Use another paper towel to pat dry off the oil from the top. Then coat the fried dough in powdered sugar (I also mixed in half packet of vanilla sugar), just like funnel cakes. Happy Easter!

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And it’s also super delicious. Bad combination, indeed!

I decided to surprise my mom this Christmas by baking a štedrovečerný koláč (Christmas Eve cake), or štedrák for short. This cake (koláč) is baked for Christmas or New Years, but never in my family. This was the first time for both my mom and me to try this treat. We’ve been missing out!

Štedrák is a layered cake. The layers are made of leavened dough, and are filled with the traditional Slovak village home-cooking fillings: plum jam, poppy seeds, ground walnuts, and farmer cheese. Think of it as buchty, poppy seed rolls, and tvarožník all fused into one delicious calorie bomb.

I found the recipe for the cake in Slovenská Kuchárka (available online here). I also found several recipes online on mimibazar, toprecepty.cz, and mojerecepty). The last one, from mojerecepty, is interesting, because instead of being layered, the fillings are organized as concentric circles.

This cake originated as traditional ceremonial holiday bread, similar to the Eastern Slovak kračún, which was believed to hold magical powers. This bread was prepared for the Christmas Eve dinner, and the many layers symbolized abundance, fertility, and good harvest. This is because the belief of first-day magic was prevalent in the olden days. Back when Christmas coincided with New Years, and as one did on Christmas, one was bound to repeat during the whole next year. There are also different versions of this cake, some containing ingredients such as hazelnuts, prunes, or apples. These days, it is prepared only rarely. Instead, it’s place at the Christmas table has been taken over by the poppy seed (makovník) or nut rolls (orechovník), or various assorted Christmas cookies (this info comes from Úľuv, Slovak Centre for Folk Art Production).

Anyway, enough blabbering, let’s start baking! The recipe below is how I made it. It’s a variation on the recipes above. Feel free to experiment, especially when it comes to the fillings.

Dough: 500g flour, 70g sugar, 2 yolks, 3dl milk, 1 stick of butter, packet of yeast, lemon zest, yolk for covering
Poppy filling: 150g ground poppies, 2dl milk, 120g sugar, 1 tbsp butter
Nut filling: 180g ground nuts, 1.5dl milk, 100g cukru, 3 tsp bread crumbs, 4 tbsp sugar, one packet of vanilla sugar
Farmer cheese filling: 300g farmers cheese, 4 tbsp sugar, 4 tbsp butter, 3 tbsp raisins, 2 yolks, snow from two whites, vanilla sugar, lemon zest.
Plum filling: 200g plum butter
Prep time: 5 hours

Here are the ingredients you’ll need. If you are having hard time finding poppy seeds, try asking the bakery department in your local grocery store. I was able to buy a pound of poppy seeds for a mere dollar at my local Giant! The plum jam came from Russian gourmet store.

Prepare the dough

Combine the ingredients, minus the yeast and milk, in a bowl. I decided to scald the milk. Scalding milk used to be required back in the days before all milk got pasteurized. Nowadays, it’s no longer needed for safety reasons – and there is an interesting debate on About.com on this topic. The recipes did not call to scald the milk, but I figured it will improve the taste. The warm milk will also heat up the dough, aiding the fermentation.

Mix everything together, and only then add the primed yeast. Yeast likes it warm, but not hot. By adding the yeast to the hot milk directly your run the risk of cooking the yeast, which would be bad. To prime the yeast, simply pour little bit of milk into a bowl, microwave for 10 seconds, add a spoon of sugar and the yeast, and then whisk for 20 seconds with a fork to give the yeast air. Let sit for few minutes until it bubbles up. Knead together until you get smooth dough that doesn’t stick. Form into a ball, cover with a cloth, and let rise for 3 hours. You can also do what I do, and that is after two hours deflate the risen yeast, knead for about 5 minutes, and let rise again.

Alright, that’s done. Now let’s start preparing the fillings!

Make the poppy seed filling

You will need a poppy seed grinder to make the poppy seed filling. Coffee grinders don’t work too well. The blades simply slice the seeds, but you actually want to break them by squishing them. This releases the oil stored in the seeds resulting in a smooth paste. Poppy seeds ground in a coffee grinder end up looking like dust.

Combine the seeds, butter, and sugar in a pot and heat on low heat. Bring to boil, stirring continuously. This will take about 15 minutes.

And also make the walnut filling

The walnut filling is made similarly, but you use ground walnuts. I ground the nuts by first chopping them in a food processor to get small chunks. I then ran them through the same grinder used to grind the poppy seeds.

And the farmer cheese (tvaroh) filling

To make the farmer cheese (tvaroh) filling, combine farmer cheese, two yolks, sugar, raisins, lemon zest, and vanilla sugar. Save the egg whites and beat them for about 10 minutes until you get foam, called snow (sneh) in Slovak. It shouldn’t be as stiff as when making meringue, whisk it until it resembles whipped cream. You don’t cook this filling. Just mix it together until everything is blended.

The cookbook said to mix the plum jam with lemon zest. It actually said to add lemon zest to all the fillings. I only added it to the farmer cheese, and used plum jam straight out of the jar.

The layers are now done. Let’s assemble it all together.

Roll out the dough and layer the cake

After the dough has risen, form it into a brick, and divide into five equal chunks. The recipe book said to roll out each section to the thickness of a finger (about 1cm). I had WAAY too little dough and WAAY too much filling for this – the cake would be as big as an index card, and tall as a small child if I did it like that. This cake is usually made in a rectangular shape, but I happened to have this convenient aluminum pie pan lying around. So I rolled the dough out to the size of the pan. It ended up being about 3 mm thick.

Place one layer on your baking sheet or in the pan (make sure to grease it first). Then spread plum jam on it. Top with another layer of dough. I rolled the first layer bit too small so I made the second one slightly larger bigger than the pan and pushed the extra dough down to seal the jam in.

Gently flatten the dough with your palm, and spread the walnut filling on it. Then top with another layer of dough.

Cover this layer with the poppy seed paste, and top again with another layer of dough.

And then cover this one with the farmer cheese filling. Now, take the last piece of dough, and roll it out into a long rectangle (instead of a circle). Cut into stripes and arrange these in a grid on the top.

Bake

This was my first time making such a grid – I definitely need more practice! Try to arrange the strips so they alternate up-and-down to get a nice cross-stitch pattern. Then beat one yolk and coat the top of the cake with this egg wash. Bake in an oven preheated to 350F for 40 minutes until the top gets nicely brown.

And enjoy

Let cool, slice into small squares (the cake is really rich and filling), and enjoy. A lot of work, but definitely worth it!

Check out my little write up to find out more about Christmas in Slovakia. And also check out the other Christmas recipes.

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This recipe comes from my grandma Pavka (and was emailed in by my cousin Katka). I adapted it a bit by adding coconut flakes to the filling. Besides the ingredients below, you will also need muffin cups. I recommend the mini size, because these treats are super rich, and the tiny ones are just enough.

Chocolate layers: 150g of chocolate, 3/4 stick of Crisco, 3 teaspoons of cocoa
Filling: 100g of ground nuts, 150g powdered sugar, 1/2 stick of Crisco, 2 teaspoons of cocoa, 1dL (0.4 cups) milk

Start by melting the chocolate. I didn’t really pay too close attention to the amount of each ingredient. I started by melting 3 squares, but the chocolate was too thin so I added another two. Roughly, the ratio of chocolate to the fat should range between 3:1 to 2:1.

You can use a double boiler (one pot immersed in another one containing boiling water), but I find this not necessary. Just place the pot on the smallest burner your stove has, and turn it to the lowest setting. Keep stirring so the chocolate doesn’t burn. Also, do not fully melt it, turn the heat off when there is still a small piece of solid chocolate left. This way, the piece will melt from the residual heat, but won’t get hot enough to de-temper the chocolate. You can also add cocoa and powdered sugar to taste.

Arrange the muffin baskets on a tray (I used a baking sheet), and pour in about a tablespoon of chocolate into each cup. Pour it in close to the center, so the chocolate distributes evenly all around. Make sure to save half the chocolate for later. Place in a cool place or the fridge to allow the chocolate to set. I think it’s better to use a cold basement than the fridge, since the drastic change in temperature between the outside and the fridge (usually just few degrees above freezing) can cause the chocolate to crack or turn murky.

Ganache

Šuhajdy are made of three layers, and the middle layer is sweet ganache cream filling. To make it, simply combine sugar, cocoa, flavoring, milk or cream, and solid fat (Crisco) in a pot. Bring to boil on low heat. Let go through the boil for a minute, while continuously stirring. Another way you could make it is by first scalding the milk and then pouring it over the mixture of sugar, nuts, and fats. As far as the flavor goes, feel free to experiment with what you like. There are basically two kinds of šuhajdy: nut (orechy) and coconut (kokos). I used bit of each! What looks like ground nuts in the picture above is actually roughly equal combination by volume of hazelnuts, walnuts and coconut flakes, which I ran through the blender. I didn’t use any alcohol, but a shot of rum would blend in nicely.

Bring the chocolate baskets up from your basement or the fridge, and spoon in the filling. The filling is much thicker than the thin chocolate, so you really need to make sure to pour it in the middle so that you get a smooth, level layer. Also remelt the second half of chocolate (or make more if you ran out), and top off the baskets. Then top each cup with a walnut.

Place in a cool place to allow the chocolate to set. That’s it. Very easy and super delicious. Enjoy!

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Well, this past Thursday and Friday was round #2 for me. See, I started SlovakCooking.com about year and a half ago for a simple reason: to let people know about the delicious Slovak cuisine. And there is no better way than letting folks try our specialties (which are so hard to find here in the US).

So, I decided to run sweepstakes for Slovak Christmas cookies. Five winners were selected at random out of the 600 entries, with each receiving a dozen of assorted Slovak Christmas cookies. Congrats to them all – and off to the kitchen with me.

I ended up making quite an assortment, as you can see in the photos below. In all, I made the three cookies from before, along with my grandma’s bear paws, and two new kinds, walnuts (oriešky) and chocolate šuhajdy. Here is the recipe for the walnuts.

Variety of Christmas cookies I baked for the sweepstakes winners.

These nut cookies are very popular in Slovakia. They consist of two shells joined together by a sweet cream. The shells should be in the form of walnuts (oriešky), but since I couldn’t find such a form anywhere, I used the Madeleine mold. I bought mine in Williams & Sonoma, but you can buy a similar – albeit shorter – mold at Amazon (you’ll also support the site by making the purchase through that link).

This recipe comes from mimibazar.sk, my favorite Slovak cooking site. Making these cookies consists of three steps: baking the shells, making the cream, and joining them together. Ingredients below are as given in the orignal recipe, I used roughly half of everything.

Dough: 150g ground walnuts, 600g flour, 300g butter, 1-2 eggs, 200g granulated sugar, 2 tablespoons cocoa
Cream: 4 eggs, 200g powdered sugar, 1 packet vanilla sugar, 250g butter
Prep Time: 2.5 hours

Baking the walnut (or Madeleine) shells

Place all the dough ingredients in a bowl and mix together until you get smooth dough having consistency of play-doh (plastelína). Wrap the dough in parchment paper and place in the fridge for few minutes, while you go about greasing the molds.

It’s important to grease the molds with oil so that the finished cookies don’t get stuck. Just take a pastry brush and apply a thin coat of oil to all the molds. Make sure to get the edges too. Then sprinkle bit of flour into each mold and rub it around with your fingers. To fill the molds, take a small ball of dough, place in the middle, and squeeze out to the sides. You want to make a dip in the center to leave room for the cream.

Here is a close up of how I was filling the molds. Check out the bowl shape to hold the cream.

Bake the cookies for about 8 minutes at 375F. They are done when they stop looking gooey. Let them cool a bit, and then carefully flip the mold over. If you get lucky, the cookies will fall out. More likely, they won’t. So, next grab a knife or a spoon, and start banging on the underside of the sheet. Do this while holding the mold as closely to your counter top as possible. Most of cookies will fall out, but there will be few stranglers. For these, use a sharp knife and carefully cut around the edges. Just a tiny poke is all that is often needed; often these cookies get stuck along the edge of the mold. Then carefully push them out by pressing the knife alone one edge, the bottom flat section worked the best. The cookies will slide out.

Making the sweet cream filling

Hard part done, next comes the cream. I improvised here, and added ground walnuts to the mix. I figured, heck, these are nut cookies, may as well make the filling nut flavored too. Grinding nuts in a food processor is a good way to get started, but to get the really creamy texture, you will need either a more powerful chopper than what I have, or one of these old fashioned disc seed and nut grinders (I bought this one from Amazon, it gets the job done, but the tin coating started peeling off after just two uses).

Combine eggs, nuts, vanilla sugar (or vanilla extract), and half of powdered sugar together in a double boiler. This is just a fancy word for smaller pot sitting in a larger one filled with boiling water. This assures that the mixture heats up at the boiling temperature of water (100C or 212F) instead of the temperature of the metal pot heated by natural gas flame, which can reach temperatures as high as 1500C or 3000F. As you keep whisking, you will notice the mixture will start thickening. Keep whisking until it reaches consistency of honey.

Let the mixture cool, and in the mean time, combine butter and the second half of powdered sugar in a pot or a bowl. Using a fork (the whisk didn’t work too well, the butter is too sticky), blend everything together. Whisk to get creamy consistency. Don’t heat the butter when doing this.

Finally, work the butter into the cream. I placed the cream pot back in the warm water bath to soften-up the cream. That’s it. It may look complicated, but making cream is actually quite easy!

Putting it all together

The last part is fun. Find two shells of approximately equal size (they will vary in size somewhat based on how much dough you put in), and top one side with cream. Press the second half on it to make the walnut.

Sprinkle with powdered sugar and you are done! You can also get creative with the dough. I had these mushroom molds, so I made some chocolate summer ceps (dubák).

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Both of those are really delicious. But nowhere as delicious as these little sugar rings or wreaths (venčeky). These are my favorites!

We ended up using half the amount listed below. The recipe comes from the same Czech collection we used in making the zebra cookies.

Ingredients: 250g flour, 250g margarine, 100g ground hazelnuts or almonds, bit of salt, half a spoon of cinnamon, 1 teaspoon of orange zest and juice, 1 egg, 5 spoons of white wine
Prep Time: about 2 hours plus 15 minutes for baking.

Start by adding the flour. Then add the margarine and the ground nuts. I used almonds instead of hazelnuts. I don’t know if there is a mistake in the original recipe, or if the margarine was too melted, but the recommended amount of margarine resulted in the dough being too sticky to work with. We had to add more flour. So when you are making these cookies, use less margarine to begin with and add more as needed.

Then add a hint of salt and the grated orange zest.

And a little wine (víno) for good taste. Form into a ball, wrap in foil, and let cool in the fridge for 30 minutes.

Then roll the dough out, and use grooved cookie cutters to cut out the rings. My mom picked up this set of 5 cutters in Williams & Sonoma for 16 dollars. Cut out the big circle, lift off the the dough from the mat (use a knife if stuck), and then cut out the middle section. Bake on baking paper for about 15 minutes at 350F, until they brown and the margarine stops sizzling.

Coating in sugar

While the cookies are baking, mix the powdered sugar with vanilla sugar and ground cinnamon. Coat the cookies in this mixture while they are still hot. I also had some left over chocolate from the making the marble cookies, so I dipped few in chocolate as well.

And that’s it, super easy! Enjoy.

Recipe #100!

By the way, this is recipe #100. This site started about year and a half ago with me knowing how to make only a handful of Slovak dishes. It’s been a great journey since!

And just few more photos of the cookies we baked to tease you. They were delicious! Veselé Vianoce (Merry Christmas).

Don’t forget to check out Parts 1 and 2, jam-filled hearts and two-color cookie “combs”.

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