Kolaches
A Czech specialty similar to Danishes, this light and sweet pastry is filled with quark cheese and topped with fruit and a delicious crumble!
The September Daring Bakers’ challenge was brought to us by Lucie from ChezLucie. She challenged us to make a true Czech treat –Kolaches! As you may have realized when Efrain posted his Daring Cooks’ challenge, we are now members of the Daring Kitchen! Efrain will be focusing on the cooks’ challenges while I will be focusing on the bakers’ challenges. Expect to see some great new recipes as a result of our participation as we find out about some really interesting new dishes. For this month’s post, it is all about a Czech treat that I had never even heard about before, and was very happy to try.
A Kolache is a pastry that is filled with quark, a type of cheese, and then topped with jam and a simple crumble. It is sweet, but not overpoweringly so- you can have it for breakfast, as a snack, or even dessert! This recipe makes plenty to share, so you will need to find people to help you eat these before they all suddenly disappear. One of my favorite things about these light little treats is that you can customize the toppings to be your favorite flavor. I used lemon and raspberry jams, as those are what I had and my friends and I prefer. If you have access to or prefer plum, go ahead and make the kolaches using that!
The recipe may seem a bit complicated, but it really is a straight-forward process. As a bonus, I took plenty of pictures to help you get through all of the steps! :)
Once your dough is ready, you roll it out and use a cutter or glass edge to make circles for the base.
Those circles then get topped with the quark filling, and you want to roll up the circles and pinch the edges together.
Kolaches
Ingredients
For dough
3-2/3 cup all-purpose flour
¾ cup confectioner’s sugar
1 cup milk, warm
1/3 cup butter, melted
1 oz fresh yeast or 2 packets (4 teaspoons) (½ oz) active day yeast
pinch of salt
2 small egg yolks
For quark filling
3 cups (1-2/3 lb) quark
1 small egg yolk
Confectioner’s sugar to taste
For plum filling
2/3 cup plum jam
Rum or hot water to soften jam if too thick
For streusel topping
1/3 cup plain flour
¼ cup butter, chilled and diced
¼ cup granulated sugar
For finish
1 egg
Directions:
In a bowl mix together yeast and 1 teaspoon sugar. Add 4 tablespoons (¼ cup) warm milk, mix well and sprinkle with 1 tablespoon flour. Cover with plastic wrap and let rest for 10 – 15 minutes.
In a bowl of your electric mixer (or in a large bowl) mix flour, sugar, salt, egg yolks, butter, milk and leavened yeast. Knead with dough hook (or with wooden spoon) on low speed for about 10 minutes. Cover with plastic wrap and let rise for about one hour to double its volume.
Meanwhile prepare quark filling – just mix all ingredients – and plum filling – mix plum jam with rum or water to soften it. Set aside.
Prepare streusel topping. In a medium bowl, mix together sugar, flour and cinnamon. Add cold butter diced in small cubes and with your fingers, mix all ingredients until crumbly. You can also use my mum’s trick – in a saucepan melt the butter, add flour and sugar at once and mix with fork until crumbly. Set aside.
When the dough is risen turn it onto a lightly floured surface and roll it with rolling pin to a thickness of about 2 cm (¾ inch). Cut with 10cm (4 inch) cookie cutter or just with a glass (if you want small kolaches) or divide the dough into 10 equal pieces (if you want large kolaches). Splat each piece with your hands and fill with quark filling. Wrap it into a “purse” shape.
Preheat oven to 340°F. Line 2 – 3 baking sheets with parchment paper. Put each kolach onto a prepared baking sheet with seam down. Press each kolach in the middle as you can see on the picture below. Brush it with egg wash and fill holes with plum filling. Sprinkle it with streusel topping. Bake for about 20 minutes to golden brown.
*The recipe comes from the Daring Baker's Challenge; the photographs are copyright Rooks to Cooks and may not be used without permission.
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Posted on 9/30/14 by Kiley
Flip the kolach over so the seam side is on the bottom, and make an indent in the center of the kolach for the jam filling.
Fill each kolach with jam, and then sprinkle on the topping making sure to generously cover each one.
Bake them, and then enjoy! I found that I added more jam to the kolaches after they had baked, because there was not enough fruity taste otherwise. Be more giving with your jam topping than I was!