Making Kolaches

What do you get when you have 6 females, a lot of time on your hands and a variety of pie fillings? A party and 40 Kolaches later…

My kitchen smells like a bakery! My mom, niece, and another young girl came over today and we learned the fine art of making these beautiful pastries with a thimbleful of filling dotting their centers. Kolaches are a Czech-originated treat, and can be made with sausage or meat fillings, but we went the sugary route choosing from lemon, almond, strawberry, cherry, raspberry and peach. With all that we had leftover, my girls and I are planning on a Kolache Kraze tomorrow morning…my mom assures me that they freeze wonderfully!

Before I share the recipe we used, here is a link for Poppy Seed Kolaches. Just for you, Mom!

No Knead Refrigerator Kolache

• 4 cups flour
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 1 tsp salt
• 1/2 cup butter
• 1/2 cup shortening
• 1 cup cold milk
• 4 egg yolks
• 1 package dry yeast
• 1/2 cup warm water
• 1 tsp sugar
• 3 (12 oz) cans of fruit or almond filling

Streusel Topping: Mix 3 TB flour, 3 TB sugar and 2 TB butter till crumbly (do this shortly before you need it so the butter won’t get too soft to be “sprinkled”)

Measure flour, salt, shortening and butter into mixer’s bowl. Mix as for pie crust. (The flat blade of your stand mixer works great for this!) Dissolve yeast in separate bowl of warm water, add 1 tsp sugar. Let rise until it comes near top of bowl. In another bowl, mix milk with 1/4 cup sugar and 4 egg yolks. Add dissolved yeast mixture to milk mixture. Pour liquid mixture into flour mixture, folding in until all flour is absorbed. Put on floured board and knead into a ball. Put into a greased bowl, cover and refrigerate overnight or at least 4 hours.

Put dough on floured board. Divide into 5 pieces. Make each piece into oblong roll and cut into 8. Dough will be very sticky. When forming into balls, use a little flour to help. Roll into ball and put on lightly greased baking pans. Cover and let rise to double. Do the same for the other pieces. When risen, depress centers, brush edges with melted butter and fill with filling of your choice. Sprinkle with streusel and let rise. Bake at 375 degrees for 10-15 minutes.

Just for fun~ you can make a cloth depressor to press down the kolache in the center…this is the hole that you dab with filling…we did this today: Cut a 7 inch square pice of cloth. Put 2 TB of flour in center and twist the ends together to make a tight ball. Tie with string or bread twister (we used rubber bands) next to compressed flour ball. Use for pressing down dough centers.