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 is another dish I helped with at my grandma’s.

Start by rolling out the leavened dough to about 3 mm thin. Then using a knife or the circular dough cutting tool, cut out squares about 2×2 inches. Place a spoonful of thick plum jam (slivkový lekvár) in the middle. Pinch the dough together in one spot and work your way around accordion style to make the dumpling.

Alternatively, you can pinch together the diagonal ends. Form into a ball.

Place the dumplings aside, and fill a large pot with water. Make sure you have a lid for it. Then place a cloth over the top and tie it around with a string.

Then once the water is boiling place the dumplings on the cloth. Cover and let steam for about 12 minutes.

Carefully remove buchty from the steam and brush on melted butter. Then top with sweet ground poppy seeds or ground walnuts mixed with sugar.

Serve as main course for lunch or dinner. I particularly like this dish after a bowl of chicken noodle soup. Dobrú chuť!

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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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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.

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Rumové Guľky (small rum balls) is a very popular Christmas desert. These treats will be included on any holiday table along with a wide assortment of other pastries. The great thing about this particular sweet is that it is extremely easy to make. It requires no baking and you can make it literally in under 20 minutes. This was another dish I brought in to the Sv. Mikuláš party, along with the 100-person sauerkraut soup.

Combine two cups of powdered sugar (práškový cukor) and two cups of ground walnuts (mleté orechy, “home made” in a food processor).

Add a yolk (žĺtok) and a shot of rum (štamprlík rumu). Or, in my case, a shot of Scotch whiskey, since I didn’t have any rum. Mix together using a wooden spoon. I started mixing with my hands but this was a bad idea. The starting mixture is extremely sticky!

Grate chocolate (čokoláda) and mix with crystal sugar (kryštálový cukor). I used semi-sweet baking chocolate, and I shredded it using my food grater. I also waited a while before forming the balls. This is because I wanted to eat my breakfast of scrambled eggs before they got cold. However, I think that by waiting a bit, the dough has gotten less sticky and easier to work with. Simply take out a piece of the nut mixture and roll it into a nice small sphere.

Cover in the chocolate/sugar mixture, or cover in coconut (kokos) shredding. Place in a paper basket.

And that’s it. They tasted great, despite being made with whiskey instead of rum. For another great sweet treat, checkout the recipe for plum dumplings.

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One of my favorite candies in Slovakia are little banana-shaped yellow jello pieces covered in dark chocolate. They are made by a company named Orion, and are called (quite appropriately) “Bananas in Chocolate” (external link). I think they are also commonly known as “banánky” (little bananas). Well yesterday my friend Miroslava sent me a photo of her chocolate covered bananas, along with the recipe. Here it is:

Melt chocolate (čokoláda) of your choice (baking chocolate or a chocolate bar) by placing it in a small pot, which you in turn place in a larger pot containing boiling water. This is done so that the chocolate melts without burning. You can alternatively try the microwave. Then when the chocolate is melted, simply dip in it peeled bananas (banány). Cover them right away with your choice of toppings: sliced almonds (sekané mandle), poppy seeds (mak), or sesame seeds (sézamové semienka) work great. Poke a toothpick in one end and enjoy.

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