Kolaczki: cream cheese shortbread pockets with plum butter, three ingredients for the dough
A dough of roughly equal amounts of flour, cold butter and cream cheese, with a spoonful of sugar and no eggs. The cheese stands in for water and eggs: it brings moisture, fat and a slight tang, while cold pieces of butter separate the dough into layers, so kolaczki are short and faintly flaky at once. Squares with a teaspoon of plum butter, two corners folded and pinched, a quarter of an hour in a hot oven, and icing sugar.
Your own work in that: 45 min.
- Dough 15 min
- Dough chilling 120 min
- Shaping 30 min
- Baking 28 min
Step by step
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Make the dough and chill it
Put the flour, sugar and salt in a bowl. Add the cold cubed butter and cold cream cheese, cut them in with a knife until crumbly, then bring together quickly, in under a minute, into a single ball. Flatten into a disc, wrap in film and chill at least 2 hours, ideally overnight.
Ingredients: 250 g plain flour · 200 g butter · 200 g cream cheese · 1 tbsp sugar · 1 pinch salt
TipThe short, flaky texture comes from pieces of fat that steam in the oven and push the dough apart. Rubbed in with warm hands, the butter soaks into the flour and the biscuits bake hard instead of short.
Crumbs, then quickly into a disc and the fridge
Roll it thin
Heat the oven to 190 °C and line the trays. Cut the dough in half and keep one half in the fridge. Roll the other on a lightly floured board to 3 mm. If it starts sticking to the pin, put it back in the fridge for 10 minutes.
TipThis dough only works while it is cold. Warm, it turns tacky, takes up dusting flour, and bakes hard. Work with half the batch at a time and keep the rest chilled.
Three millimetres, the dough cold throughout
Cut squares
With a pastry wheel or knife cut the sheet into 6 × 6 cm squares. Gather the offcuts, press them together, flatten and chill: you will roll them at the end with the second half.
6 cm squares, offcuts back to the fridge
Fill and fold the corners
Put a level teaspoon of plum butter in the middle of each square. Fold two opposite corners over it so they overlap by 1 cm and pinch them together firmly. Set on the trays 2 cm apart.
Ingredients: 250 g plum butter or thick jam · 3 tbsp icing sugar
TipA teaspoon is the maximum. Jam boils and expands in the oven; with more of it the steam forces the seam open, the corners spring apart and the filling runs out and burns on the tray.
A level teaspoon, corners overlapping and firmly pinched
Bake hot and briefly
Bake one tray at a time, 12–14 minutes at 190 °C, until the edges are barely golden and the bases browned. Kolaczki should stay pale: longer baking dries them out and dulls the flavour of the cheese.
TipHigh heat and a short bake are what make the layers: the water in the butter and cheese flashes to steam and separates the dough before the fat can soak in. Too low a heat melts the fat out before the dough can separate, and the biscuits come out flat and dense.
Twelve minutes, edges barely goldenCool and dust
Leave on the tray 5 minutes (hot, they are fragile and break when moved), then transfer to a rack. Dust the cold biscuits generously with icing sugar. They keep a week in a tin, and three months baked and frozen.
Five minutes on the tray, then the rack and icing sugar
Before you start
With curd cheese
200 g well-drained curd cheese pushed through a sieve: a less creamy, more rustic dough, just as short. Add a spoon of sour cream with it.
Other fillings
Thick plum butter, marmalade, poppy seed filling or a piece of dried plum. Runny jam is out: it will escape however small the spoonful.
The corners spring open
The dough was too warm, or too dry where it was pinched. Moisten the corners with a drop of water before folding and chill the shaped biscuits 10 minutes before baking.
Nutrition
per 100 gStep photos are computer-generated from the recipe.
