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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And here is the last of the three recipes from Alena’s mom kitchen. This time, it’s for little round cookies or koláčiky. This treat shares the sweet dough with the apricot cake and the poppy seed rolls.

Roll the dough out and then use a floured drinking glass to cut out circles (like when making pirohy).

Then top each with the sweet farmer’s cheese (tvaroh) mixture mixed with raisins (hrozienka). Move everything onto a baking sheet, and top with the flour crust.

And bake at 350F. These are making me really hungry!

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Another food item that can be prepared from the sweet leavened dough is vianočka. It is a sweet braided raisin bread that looks very much like the Jewish challah. It is often eaten for breakfast, topped with butter and jam (raspberry being my favorite). It is also often prepared for Easter and for Christmas. In fact, the name vianočka is derived from the Slovak word for Christmas, vianoce.

The trick in making this bread is in braiding the dough. I am sure that just about every Slovak babička (grandma) has her own way. Here I show you how my grandma makes it, by braiding four strands. The standard way is by braiding three strands so here is a slightly more advanced technique. Start by kneading the dough and lightly rolling it out to a rectangle about an inch thick. Cut it into six rectangles again about an thick. By the way, you should work raisins into the dough while kneading it. We didn’t do this, since my grandma also wanted to show me how to prepare buchty na pare. These dumplings are made out of the same leavened dough but do not contain raisins.

Take four of these braids and join them at one end. Add raisins if they were not already worked into the dough. Then fold the 2nd braid from the top to the bottom and the fourth one to the top.

Then take the first braid and move it to the bottom, underneath the bottom braid. Then take braid that’s on top and move it underneath the outer braids.

Then basically continue braiding until you run out of dough.

Tuck the ends together and place in your baking pan.

Now take the other two braids and twist them together. Place this “ponytail” on top of the bread. Brush on little bit of oil and let rest for about 15 minutes.

Finally bake on bottom of a preheated stove for about 20 minutes. Vianočka is also often brushed with egg yolk during baking to get a shinier crust. Slice and serve with hot chocolate.

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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 in Slovakia to the American apple pie. However, žemlovka doesn’t need to be made with apples. It’s also delicious with nectarines, plums or pears. But apple is the most common filling and so that’s how we prepared it today. I made this dish with the help of my mom and my grandma, who yesterday prepared the very delicious apple pancakes.

We made the pie with rožky, little baguette-like bread rolls. These are not sold in America, but any Italian-style white bread should work fine. But if you feel adventurous, you can bake your own bread rolls. It’s better if the bread is a day old, so its easier to cut.

Start by cutting apples (jablká) into few pieces and removing the pits and the seeds. Shred the apples using a food processor or a hand grater. Then add 4 tablespoons of powdered sugar (práškový cukor) and about a teaspoon of cinnamon (škorica).

Also add about a handful of raisins (hrozienka) and mix together. All this is done to taste so don’t worry if you deviate from these amounts. Next prepare the cheese filling by mixing the farmer’s cheese (tvaroh) with another 2 tablespoons (again to taste) of powdered sugar.

Now cut up the bread rolls (rožky) into circles about quarter inch thick. These will be soaked in a sauce prepared from 4 yolks, 1 quart of milk and 2 tablespoons of powdered sugar. Save the whites, you will use them later.

Grease a deep baking pan well all around with butter. Then dust a thin layer of of finely ground bread crumbs (strúhanka) all around the pan. Then place about a handful of the sliced bread rolls in the egg sauce. Let them soak for few seconds, and then squeeze out much of the liquid. Place the rolls on the bottom of the baking pan to make the bottom layer. Do this with half of the bread rolls. Save the other half for later.

Then add a layer of the fruit mixture and then another of the cheese filling.

Finally, place the other half of rolls in the sauce. Let them soak up all the liquid. Then scoop them into the baking pan and make another bread layer. Then generously spread slices of butter (masľo) on this top layer. Bake in a preheat hot oven.

The baking time will vary depending on the size of your pie, but it will take about an hour. You want the top to be crunchy and golden brown. But if not sure, just take out a small spoonful and taste it. Once the pie is done, beat the egg whites (bielka) mixed with few spoons of powdered sugar into a stiff snow. Spread this evenly on the top.

Bake for another 10-or-so minutes. Let cool down before cutting.

One of the peculiarities of the Slovak kitchen is that we often eat sweet dishes for the main course (eg. plum dumplings or poppy seed noodles). Žemlovka is no exception. Although this dish resembles the apple pie, it is eaten as the main entrée, typically following some sour soup. From the picture above, you can see that this is exactly how we had this dish today. It followed a really delicious sour mushroom soup prepared by my aunt Soňa, who previously prepared the stuffed peppers.

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