Jam Turnovers (Lekvárove Taštičky)
Ingredients: frozen puff pastry sheet, 1 yolk, plum or blueberry jam
Prep Time: 30 minutes
Lekvárove taštičky means “jam sachets”, but these are basically identical to turnovers. This pastry is amazingly simple to make, assuming you start off with frozen puff pastry sheets. This is another item that was prepared by my dad’s friend Janka. We made them from the same frozen dough that was used for the salt sticks.
Take the puff pastry (lístkové cesto) sheet and roll it out on a floured surface until you have a sheet few millimeters thick. Take a sharp a knife and first lightly mark the squares you want to cut out. Then cut out pieces about 2 by 2 inches. Then place about a teaspoon of jam in each piece. We used blueberry jam (čučoriedkový lekvár) but supposedly plum jam (slivkový lekvár) works the best.
Then make the sachets, or “little bags”, taštičky. Fold the square over to make a triangle and push shut with your finger. Or, fold one third of the square over and the fold over again to make the rectangular pieces.
Take a pastry brush, and brush on whisked yolk onto each. You want to use just the yolk, since the whites would dry up the dough. Bake at 400F for 15-20 minutes.
Hardest thing about making these jam turnovers was resisting the temptation to eat them all. I still managed to finish about 10 before dinner. And don’t forget to check out the recipe for poppy and walnut roll, as prepared by my grandmother.
the best taste – before baking sprinkled with chopped walnuts 🙂
Can you post receipe for listkove cesto?
Hi Anne, I have actually never tried making lístkové cesto (puff pastry dough) from scratch. But I definitely will make it at some point in the future and will post the recipe. Make sure to subscribe to the newsletter if you have not so already so that you don’t miss it when it gets posted.
The cookbook I use says that the most important thing is to use “fine-grind” flour. In Sloakia, flour comes in various coarsenesses of grind. You then make two types of dough, závinové (roll) and tukové (grease). You roll out the first kind of dough to a shape of a square, and place the second kind of dough, formed into shape of a cube, on top of it. You then fold it over like an envelope.
There is no recipe for the “greasy” dough in the book (go figure). I am guessing that it’s probably just flour and butter. The roll dough is made from flour, salt, luke-warm water, egg, and a bit of vinegar. The dough should not be sticky. You grab it and smack it against a board multiple times until it stops being sticky.
The pastry should also be baked at high temperature, and it’s important to not open the oven door for the first 10-15 minutes so it remains puffy. After that, you can reduce the oven temperature to bake it through.
Hopefully this helps for now, I realize this is confusing. Which is why I have yet to make this dough from scratch…
Hi Lubos, I am a chef by trade and I have a couple of recipes for puff pastry if you are still looking for it.
I just stumbled across this page. My grandfather is slovak and I was reminiscing about food that we used to eat at his house. Great collection of slovak dishes that you have. I’m definitely going down memory lane looking at some of them. I know this is the jam turnover page, but I noticed that your dough for the poppy seed and walnut rolls does not contain potato. In my family we mix potato in. Always interesting to see the differences.
One recommendation when making these pastries or filled pastries made of puff dough is to make tiny holes with fork or toothpick to allow for hot air to come through and prevent the sachets from blowing open.
I also love them,specially with apricot jam.It’s very easy to make them,if you can buy chilled puffed pastry,any man can do it.Only problem a had was with jam.This recipe is not new.It existed before manufacturers started to cheat(15-20 years ago)with adding gelatine to jam to speed up process and increase volume.As you know,traditionally jam was made from squashed fruit mixed with sugar and then slowly heated,until water evaporated and jam was nice and thick,you had much less volume,but high quality home made jam,which lasted for few years,stored in a dark cold rooms without any preservatives.When I used these new jams bought in a shop,as soon as it get hot gelatine start to melt the jam,because technically water is still there,and the jam starts to leak out of the pastries onto baking tray where it starts to burn and you end up with empty pastries.But there is a easy fix for this.Before you start filling patries,you need to slowly cook the jam in a pot to evaporate water,when is thick enough,take it off the heat,let it cool down.