Traditional Czech Kolace Recipe
A delicious enriched dough cakes with different fillins and crumble toppings.
Ingredients
Ingredients for the dough
- 500 g plain flour
- 50 g caster sugar
- 50 g butter or other baking fat – margarine, goose fat, lard
- 1 egg
- 10 g fast action dried yeast
- ½ tsp. salt
- 250 ml warm milk
- ½ tsp. vanilla extract
Ingredients for the filling (Apple Filling)
- 500 g apples sharp type works well, but don’t use cooking apples, as they lose their shape quickly
- 150 g caster sugar
- Juice from 1 lemon
- Lemon zest from 1 lemon
- ½ tsp. of cinnamon
Crumble topping
- 50 g plain flour
- 50 g unsalted butter
- 50 g caster sugar
Instructions
- Mix all the dry ingredients first, then add warmed milk with melted butter and vanilla extract.
- Knead for 10-15 minutes until smooth.
- Leave in a plastic bowl (covered) to double in size.
- Whilst the dough is rising, prepare your apple filling.
- Peel the apples and cut up to smaller pieces, making sure that you cut out the apple core.
- Put into a large pan, add a dash of water and put on a medium heat until the apples soften a bit.
- Add the sugar, lemon zest and juice and cinnamon.
- Simmer until it’s all combined and you are happy with the consistency of the filling – not too runny and not too thick. Set aside to cool down.
- You can add chopped up walnuts, raisins or anything else that goes with apples.
- If you want to add extra flavour or your filling is too runny you can also mix in crumbled gingerbread (the hard type) digestive biscuits or bread crumbs.
- When your bread dough has doubled in size, tip it out on slightly oiled work surface and divide to about 12-15 equal portions.
- Roll out and shape each piece of dough as if it was a bread roll and place on baking tray leaving space around them to allow for the dough to rise again.
- When you have all the dough balls spaced out on the tray, wrap a clean tea towel around a small jam jar (glass or anything that is the right size).
- Dab the jam jars with the tea towel in plain flour and press firmly in to the middle of your bread ball. (you can also do this with the glass dipped into a vegetable oil)
- This will create space for the filling, leaving sides to keep the filling in.
- The dough is likely to fight you back (it’s the gluten in the flour that shrinks the dough back), so you might need to go over them twice.
- Divide the apple filling evenly between all cakes, topped with crumble topping (if using)
- Loosely cover with plastic bag or cling film and leave to prove for the second time. This will take less time than before.
- Brush the sides of each cake with egg white (or milk) and bake for about 15-20 minutes at 180 C
- You can check with a wooden skewer whether the cakes are done.
- Cool on wired rack and eat the same day or freeze if you like.
Tried this recipe?Let us know how it was!