It’s never too early to start baking holiday cookies. It’s fun to see holiday traditions around the world Originally, the kolaczki is said to be from Poland (though its exact origin is unknown), and are popularly seen around the holidays. They seem to be just as popular in Cleveland, where we learned that they are known as Kiffles in Hungarian.
This recipe is courtesy of delish.com
Kolaczki cookies are Polish in origin, often made and eaten during the holiday season, stuffed with a variety of fillings. Some recipes use canned pie filling, though we opt for a cornstarch-thickened jam in this version: Adding water and cornstarch both dilutes the jam so it won’t caramelize into hard candy during the bake and provides a smooth-yet-tacky texture in the final product.
The dough is simple with just five ingredients: cream cheese, butter, powdered sugar, salt, and all-purpose flour. The sixth hidden ingredient, however, is time: The super-soft dough is hard to work with at room temperature and fares much better during assembly if allowed to chill. We recommend 1 hour chilling time in the fridge.
While most baking recipes call for dusting your work surface with flour, kolaczki cookies are traditionally rolled out in a blanket of powdered sugar. The dough is minimally sweetened, so the added benefit here is providing a nonstick surface to roll your dough out on without drying it out while adding a little more sweetness. Don’t be afraid to use as much as you need; the dough will stop absorbing the powdered sugar past a certain point.
What jam you choose to use is totally up to you. Plum jam is a deep, rich, black-ink color while apricot provides a golden hue. Strawberry jam and raspberry jam are vibrant red, while blueberry jam will provide a purple splash. If you’re non-committal like me, go for all of them! You’ll need just 1/2 cup jam total for this recipe.
The cookies might “unclasp” during the bake. To fix, once they are out of the oven, squish in the sides of the cookies so that they can cool while maintaining the clasped shape. Pinch inwards to make the points meet again and hold for a few seconds to see if you can make the points stay touching each other. If they are too hot for you to handle, practice safety and acceptance: Organic and relaxed cookies are also beautiful!
