Czech Cuisine offers a wide variety of mostly sweet pastries. They come in many different forms from little yeast cakes filled with various fillings like farmer’s cheese, and plum jam. In the past, it was a common practice to bake some kind of sweet pastries every Sunday for dessert after lunch which is the main meal of the day in the Czech Republic.  There are pastries for different occasions such as tiny wedding yeast cakes. This recipe will be a valuable addition to your collection of Czech recipes.

Ingredients

Pastries
1 cup partially melted unsalted butter
1 cup all-purpose flour
2 Tbs water
powdered sugar to coat the pastries

Plum jam filling
1 cup plum jam
1/2 cup sugar (or to taste)
3 Tbs dark rum or 1 tsp rum extract (or to taste)
1 tsp cinnamon (or to taste)
water if the filling is too thick

Farmer’s cheese filling
1 cup farmer’s cheese (or Queso Fresco)
1/2 cup sugar
2 egg yolks
1 tsp vanilla extract
milk – if the filling is too thick

Instructions

Preheat oven to 350F.

In a bowl add partially melted butter, flour, and water mix then knead until you create a firm dough that does not stick to your hands. If the dough keeps sticking to your hands, add more flour. Then let the dough rest in the refrigerator for approximately 90 minutes cover with plastic foil.

Prepare the fillings. You can use one of the mentioned fillings or both but in that case, divide all the ingredients for both fillings by 2 so that you do not end up with too much of them or make twice as much dough. Whisk all the ingredients to eliminate any lumps. The consistency of the fillings should be a thick paste. The paste should not be too thick otherwise it will get too dry while baking and it also should not be too thin so that it does not leak out of the pastries. If the filling is too thick, add water or milk according to the recipe.

After the dough has rested place or a lightly floured surface and roll until to about 1/16 inch thick. Cut the dough into 2 inch wide squares. Then put  about 1/3 Tbs of filling in the middle of each square. If the filling sticks to the spoon wet the spoon before using. After every square is filled, start folding them. There are two ways of doing this. You can either fold all four corners towards the center and connect them or you can make a diagonal fold creating a triangle and then press the two open sides of the triangle together. The second option is better at preventing any filling leakage during the baking process.

After you have folded all of the squares, start placing the pastries on a baking tray lined with baking paper. Place them about two inches apart during baking. Bake in a preheated oven at 350F for about 10 minutes or until they turn golden brown. After removing from the oven, while they are still hot place them in a bowl filled with powdered sugar coat them in sugar. Then take the pastries out and let them cool on a plate.