In making this recipe I used the frozen puff pastry dough from my local Giant. You will need to let this dough defrost for at least 20 minutes. This is also a good time to preheat your oven to 400F. The dough comes folded into three sections. As it is defrosting, carefully unfold it to make a flat sheet. For some reason, one third of the dough I was using was really stiff and non stretchy – perhaps it suffered a bad freezer burn. I tried to wet it, and roll it with a pin, but to no avail. I eventually ended up forming dough into a ball and rolling it out flat as shown below.

(By the way, that link above directs a different Giant chain. While searching for the dough link, I found out that there are actually two chains of grocery stores called “Giant” operating in Virgina, Giant-Landover, the one I shop in, and Giant-Carlisle, a sister company. Interesting!)

Ingredients: puff pastry dough, 4 small Gala apples, 3 tablespoons granulated sugar, 1 tablespoon cinnamon, melted butter, powdered sugar for topping
Prep Time: About 30 minutes of work, another 20 minutes for baking

Here are the ingredients you will need to make an apple strudel: puff pastry dough, apples, and cinnamon. You will also need sugar and butter.

Peel the apples and grate them using a coarse grater. I used 4 smallish Gala apples. Squeeze the grated apples with your hand and drain out the juice. Add sugar and cinnamon and mix well.

Roll the dough out into a long rectangle. Transfer it carefully onto a tablecloth (obrus) or a large dishtowel. I dusted the towel first with flour, but this may not be necessary. Then place your hand underneath the dough and using your fingers gently stretch the dough out as much as you can before it breaks. It will become semitransparent. Do this from inside out and all the way around.

Top the dough with the apple mixture and also brush on some melted butter.

To roll the strudel, lift up one end of the tablecloth with both hands. Bring it over the dough so that the edge separates from the tablecloth and folds over. Continue doing this until you end up with a roll.

Then carefully using the tablecloth transfer the strudel onto a greased baking sheet. Generously brush with melted butter.

Bake in oven preheated to 400F for about 20 minutes. About half way through, brush gently on all sides with melted butter. Also brush on the bottom to keep it from sticking to the pan. Be careful not to tear the dough. And if it gets stuck in a place or two, use the brush to unstick it.

Wait for the strudel to cool down and the slice it into fairly thick pieces. Sprinkle with powdered sugar. Serve with coffee and you got yourself a delicious breakfast.

For another apple and puff pastry recipe, check out “apples in a bathrobe“

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These old traditional circular baked goodies are popular at fairs (jarmoky). My hometown of Banská Bystrica is famous for a huge fair, Radvanský jarmok. This ancient fair is said to be the king of fairs. And for a good reason. It has been held in September for now over 340 years! It all started back in 1655 when then a village of Radvaň held its first market. Much has changed since then, the village has merged into the city to become one of its “suburbs”: Radvaň is now one of the two main residential parts (called sídlisko, the other is Sásová in the north end). The fair has also migrated to the center of town and is now held in conjunction with “Banská Bystrica Days“. But it is still a great place to find unique crafts and sample various culinary delicacies. In that article, in the second picture from the top, you can see another popular offering at Slovak fairs: gingerbread hearts. These are always lavishly decorated and sometimes even contain a mirror baked into the dough. Such hearts were given by boys to their loved ones, and in the past, mirrors were not as common as they are now so they were highly prized. That is at least the explanation I was given…

Ingredients: sweet leavened dough, your favorite toppings (plum jam, poppy seeds, walnuts, and farmer’s cheese are traditional)
Poppy seed / walnut filling: ground poppy seeds/walnuts, powdered sugar, milk
Tvaroh filling: farmer’s cheese, powdered sugar, raisins, egg
Prep time: 1 hour, plus few hours to the dough rise

Start by preparing the sweet leavened dough (click on the link for the recipe). While the dough is rising, prepare your favorite filling. Check out the poppy seed roll recipe for the poppy and walnut filling, and the tvaroh cake recipe for the farmer’s cheese filling. I also used plum jam (slivkový lekvár), which I found in a Russian grocery store under “plum butter”. You will also find steps for preparing these same fillings in the Christmas Eve cake recipe.

Once the dough is ready, transfer it onto a dusted board and roll out to about 4mm thick.

Then take a tall drinking glass and dust the rim with flour. Turn the glass upside down and use a twisting motion to cut out a circle. Then turn it the right side up and use the flat base to press out the edges. Or use a tablespoon, your fingers, or even a fancy kolache press. Spoon your favorite topping into the dimple.

Transfer the filled kolache onto a greased baking sheet. Brush the edges with egg yolk. Let rise while you preheat your oven the 400F. Bake for about 15 minutes until the edges turn light brown color. The poppy seed koláč went into the oven solo: my baking pan was filled with a nut roll, buchty and tvarožník. There was simply no room for it!

And that’s it, homemade koláče. Enjoy!

And for a slightly different version, checkout Alena’s recipe.

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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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Ingredients: half a fresh green cabbage (~1.7 lb), oil, 1tsp caraway, 1tsp nutmeg, 2/3 cups flour, 10 cups water, 6oz can of tomato paste, 5 tbsp salt, 3 tbsp sugar, 3 tbsp vinegar
Prep Time: about one hour

Here are the ingredients you’ll need: cabbage (I used half of it),tomato paste (not sauce, sauce has spices and such), vinegar, sugar, caraway, nutmeg, and butter or oil.

Remove the inner hard core from the cabbage, and also remove the outer green leaves. You can save them for later to make the popular stuffed cabbage (holubky). Cut the cabbage into thin “noodles”. At least that’s how I started. Soon I lost patience and I cut the rest into all sorts of random shapes.

Place the cabbage strips into a pot along with oil (I used half a cup). Fry the cabbage for 5 minutes while continuously stirring. Then add caraway (rasca) and nutmeg (muškátový oriešok). They both should be ground, but I didn’t have ground caraway, so I used it whole. Top this with flour and pour in a cup of water.

Stir and cover with the lid. Steam covered on low heat for about 30 minutes until the cabbage is almost fully cooked (soft). But keep an eye on it and stir every few minutes to make sure it doesn’t burn. Also add more water as needed.

Pour in the rest of the water and also a small 6oz can of tomato paste. Then finish seasoning with salt, sugar, and vinegar. I used 5 tablespoons of salt, 3 of sugar, and another 3 of vinegar. Feel free to adjust these to your taste.

And that’s it. By the way, I don’t think there is any food in the world more delicious than soup (any kind) with a slice of toasted home-baked bread with garlic scraped on top. Yum!

Of course, there is another kind of cabbage soup which is even more famous: the famous Christmas sauerkraut kapustnica.

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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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