Sweet Dishes, Kolache and Deserts

Steamed Sweet Dumplings (Buchty na Pare)

Ingredients: leavened dough, plum jam, butter, poppy seeds, ground walnuts, powdered sugar Prep Time: 30 minutes (not counting time to prepare the dough) I have a sweet tooth. This ought to be apparent to anyone by simply looking at the ratio of recipes in the Sweets category compared to the rest of the site. Unfortunately this is also apparent to my dentist. But it’s so hard not to like sweets, when Slovak cuisine is full of them. One of my favorites are sweet dumplings (buchty) on steam (na pare), which I show you how to prepare in this recipe. This Read the Rest…

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. Read the Rest…

Bread Pie (Žemlovka)

Ingredients: 2lb apples (or other fruit), 1L (4 cups) milk, 4 eggs, 10 bread rolls, 1lb farmer’s cheese (about 2 cups), powdered sugar, handful of raisins, butter, bread crumbs for dusting the baking pan Prep Time: 30 minutes + about 1 hour for baking Here is the recipe for žemlovka. The word žemla means bread roll so the closest I could come up with when translating the name of this delicacy was “bread pie”. This probably is not a bad name, given that it’s made with pieces of bread instead of dough. This is the closest food item we have Read the Rest…

Apple Pancakes (Jablkové Palacinky)

Ingredients: 2 cups flour, 2 cups milk, 2 apples, 2 eggs, powdered sugar, salt, jam, oil (for frying) Prep Time: 20 minutes I prepare pancakes (palacinky) by simply mixing flour, eggs, milk and sugar. However, today my grandma (from my dad’s side of the family) showed me a recipe for a slightly more elaborate version. The batter for these pancakes includes shredded apples and beaten egg whites (to make the batter fluffier). They were bit more work, but were delicious! Start by grating two semi-sweet apples (jablká). Then take two eggs (dve vajcia) and separate the yolks (žĺtka) from the Read the Rest…

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 Read the Rest…