Kolackys

For the Cultural Fair at my son's school, we decided to make kolackys to celebrate his Slovak heritage. My mom, who's not Slovak, used to make these frequently as well. The tiny cookies are made with a cream cheese dough and filled with a jam (usually apricot), poppyseed (using a can of Solo), walnut mix, or cheese.

To find a recipe, first I explored the 50-year-old Slovak cookbook from my husband's grandparents' Slovak Lutheran church. It had a whole chapter on kolackys and I discovered that the sweet little cookie treats I loved are only one version of kolackys. The other is more of a small, fruit-filled bun made with a yeast recipe. I also found my mother-in-law's recipe in my 3-ring notebook collection of recipes. It was the non-yeast version. She made them thumbprint style.

I decided to check out kolacky recipes on the Internet, which is where I've been going more often for recipes. I am even bringing my laptop into the kitchen these days.

I love the little hints I found for kolackys. The best was to use a baby spoon to dollop the filling into smaller cookies. My son thought it was funny using his old babyspoons. Another was to roll the dough into a log to easily cut rounds. Another good idea was to use powdered sugar instead of flour.

Some of my favorite recipe sites:
Recipezaar
Epicurious (the site of Gourmet and Bon Appetit)
All Recipes (sometimes not particularly sophisticated, but often quite good.)
This is the link to the kolacky recipe that most resembled the one I ended up using.

I am so glad to be able to have this high-tech recipe source.