Kolacky

Kolacky (Family Recipe)

This is my grandmother’s recipe, and the truth is the ingredient lists for most kolacky recipes are pretty similar. The main difference is technique. I have seen kolacky made as a round, thumbprint cookie. However, the type I grew up eating are more pastry like. The ingredients are simple, but these are time consuming to make. Rolling the dough out is a real workout. However, it is worth it for such a tasty cookie. These freeze well both before and after baking.

The traditional filling is prune. Apricot and strawberry are more recent innovations. Sometimes you can find pineapple kolacky filling, too. If you don’t live somewhere that sells specially made filling, then look for lekvar – otherwise Solo makes the right flavors with the correct thickness. Based on a suggestion I came across in a cookbook, I once tried to cook down some jam to use for filling. It was a very messy mistake. The filling needs to be very, very thick – based on the amount of time I would have had to cook the jam down, it would have been easier to try to make filling myself from scratch.

1 c. butter
8 oz. cream cheese at room temperature
¼ tsp. vanilla extract
2 ¼ c. unbleached, all-purpose flour
½ tsp. salt
Fruit filling
Powdered sugar for dusting

Cream butter and cheese until fluffy. Beat in vanilla. In a separate bowl, combine dry ingredients. Blend flour mixture with butter mixture. Chill dough overnight. Roll out very thinly (1/8 – 1/16”) a little at a time on a well-floured board. Cut into 2” squares with pastry cutter. Spoon a little filling on each square and fold, matching two corners diagonally and leaving the ends open. (Use a little water to seal.) Scraps can be brought together and rolled out again one or two times. Place on parchment-lined cookie sheets.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees about 15 minutes before baking. Bake about 10 minutes, until very lightly browned. (Check after 8 minutes, depending on your oven.) Cool on wire rack and sprinkle with a lot of powdered sugar.

Kolacky

Makes about 60-80 cookies, depending on how thin they are rolled.