I am a professional chef and regularly use this site for ideas, recipes and feedback. I will never rate a recipe unless it is excellent because I feel personal tastes don't ensure proper criticism. But in the case where a recipe is absolutely superb, I will give my feedback and this cookie recipe is one of the best I have tried here. I added 1/2 cup of sugar, 1 tsp of salt and 1 oz of Canadian Club Whiskey only because I wanted to enhance the creaminess of the cream cheese, and blend the flavors with the alcohol. I also remember my slovak grandmother using whiskey when she made these cookies. Your recipe brought back many happy memories. Great recipe! Thanks*****!
My Mom is American born but 100% Hungarian and we both make these, although we also make apricot and prune filled 'cakes' as well as the nut. My family calls them 'little cakes' for some reason. To make a truer apricot filling than pie filling, we buy the dried apricots, then boil them until soft, then mash with sugar and a little vanilla. The prunes get the same method but no vanilla. Much better than pie filling. Also, to keep your cakes neat and not split open, make sure you pinch the corners over the filling. I then twist the dough ends after pinching to make them look pretty. We also bake them at 375 for 9-11 minutes vs. 350 degrees. I've been making these for over 30 years, since I was a small child helping my Mom and Grandma in the kitchen, and they're by far my favorite cookie of all time. Enjoy!
BTW--they freeze well, just don't dust with confectioner's sugar until you serve them.
Every year at Christmas time my Polish great grandmother would make these. This is the closest I have found to her recipe. My grandma would make them round however. I find that the smaller you make these the less time you bake them and the moister they come out. I suggest using a shot glass (dip the rim of the glass in flour to prevent sticking). Fill with your choice of filling and fold 2 sides in towards the center (pinch to secure) or even just leave them flat. Either way these little beauties come out perfect every time.
I just made these this afternoon as a suprise for my husband (he is 1/2 Czech). They turned out great! He said they looked store bought. I used apricot filling instead of the poppyseed. If you make both the fillings - cut back the walnut version to half - I had a ton of the walnut mixture leftover. Worth the 3 hours it took to make these - they will be on the annual christmas cookie list. Thanks for a yum-yum receipe!
They're just like the ones my Grandmother from Czechoslovakia use to make. She never learned to write in English so I wasn't able to reproduce those wonderful little cookies until now. I'm teaching my 11 yo niece and 7 yo daughter to make them so they too can carry on a tradition.
My husband could not get enough of these. I used different fillings also such as apricot and raspberry. Delicious!
These cookies were pretty good! I had a hard time understanding how to shape them around the filling but I ultimately decided to just bring 2 opposite corners of each square up and over the filling and pinch them together on top. They were pretty and tasted great. I think no matter how you shape them they are likely to be tasty. Great recipe overall.
Perfection. Used the shot-glass (unfolded) method just like my Mom used to when I was a kid. I used Solo apricot filling - I could eat them all myself!
I have never tried making these myself before and these turned out very well. Recipe was a lot simpler than I thought it would be. Cream cheese butter and flour. That's it! Second time I made them I wanted to go for a low fat version and used fat-free cream cheese and low fat butter. Taste was the same but the texture came out a little rubbery. It's an ok sacrifice to enjoy these with a little less guilt that way. I didnt make the walnut filling and just bought canned filling in Poppyseed Apricot and Rasberry.
I work for Chech boss and every year in May Prauge OK. Has a Kolache(that's how they spell it) festival and we make these every year and we always make a lot of differnt fillings for these and like they get almost a crumble topping and are amazing and I hate pastry! I get these all the time the little doughnut places my town sell these
