Vegan Makovnjaca (Croatian Poppy Seed Strudel)

Makovnjaca was one of the first recipes which I came across when I started looking into Croatian Food for our January featured country - Croatia (obviously). There were a lot of different recipes out on the internet with quite a lot of variation - however, I can't credit it this to any of them because I pieced this together using ideas from a few different websites and then changed it to make it vegan. So, although it is a traditional dish - this one is very much my own recipe for it and therefore I can't comment on it's authenticity (perhaps a Croatian reader can help me out with this?).

As far as I could glean there were two types of makovnjaca on the internet - a light bready/cakey one and a denser and less fluffy strudel/danish one. This one is of the latter variety, as the pastry does not rise to make a fluffy cake. It was very delicious, particularly because it wasn't overly sweet. Before beginning Croatia Month I had never even thought to use poppy seeds as the fillings in my desserts - but having make 2 now (see the Poppy Seed and Almond Kolache recipe - link below) I am definitely a convert and will be trying to work it into my other desserts as much as possible to explore some new flavour combinations. Poppy seeds are also a good source of anti-oxidants, essential volatile oils, dietary fibre, B-complex vitamins, iron, zinc, magnesium, calcium, manganese and potassium. They can also act to soothe anxiety and irritability and ease pain due to very small levels of opium alkaloids present in them.

Ingredients

Pastry

600g wholemeal flour

150g nuttelex

100g castor sugar

200ml warm soy milk

1 tbsp golden syrup

4x 7g yeast sachets (28g)

5 tbsp water

Filling

2 cups poppy seeds

1 cup soy milk

½ cup sugar

5 tbsp apricot jam

1 tsp cinnamon

Zest of 1 lemon

1 tbsp rum

To Make

1.  Dissolve the sugar and yeast in the warm milk and leave for 15 minutes.

2. Sift the flour into a bowl and cut the nuttelex into it. Rub the nuttelex into the flour with your hands until it forms a crumbly mixture with no large bits of nuttelex.

3. Make a well in the middle and pour in the yeast mixture, golden syrup and a few tbsp water. Mix well.

4. Turn dough out onto a floured surface and knead until smooth and elastic. Put back in the mixing bowl and cover it with a tea towel. Let stand in a warm place to rest (it won’t rise much, so don’t worry if it doesn’t).

5. Put the poppy seeds, soy milk, jam, sugar and cinnamon in a saucepan and bring to a simmer. Simmer until the mixture is thick and the jam is completely dissolved. Remove from heat stir the lemon zest and rum through.

6. Divide the pastry dough in half and roll out one half into a large rectangle (use the baking tray that you’re going to be using to determine the length of the rectangle.

7. Spread half of the poppy seed filling mix evenly over the rectangle. Roll up like a jam roll. Trim the edges to be neater and place on a tray lined with baking paper.

8. Do the same thing for the other half of the pastry and filling. Brush the tops of the rolls with either soy milk or melted nuttelex.

9. Bake at 170 degrees for about 40 minutes, or until the tops are browned slightly. Allow to cool completely.

10. Slice into 2cm slices and serve.

Makes 2 makovnjaca.

Check out our other Croatian Recipes:

Poppy Seed and Almond Kolache

Yumuşacık Poğaça

(Savoury buns filled with creamy potato and pickles)

Paprenjaci

(Cracked Pepper Biscuits)

Posna Sarma

(Rice Filled Cabbage Rolls)

Croatian Pizza

Chickpea and Cabbage Salad with Tahini Dressing

I've recently bought the amazing 'Appetite For Reduction' by Isa Chandra Moskowitz and honestly it is the best book she has ever written (except maybe Vegan Cupcakes Take Over The World, but that is in a league of it's own). The first section in the book is dedicated to the most amazing sounding salads and I am literally planning to make them all starting from the first and working my way through. Salad is something, however, that I find recipes are often basic, boring and something I could have made in my sleep and I often think they are a waste of space in a cookbook. However, there is something very exciting about salad recipes which make you drool just reading them - mostly because salad is so easy to make.

As a doctor of Traditional Chinese Medicine, however, I am not an enormous advocate of salads and would strongly try to dissuade anybody thinking of going on a raw food diet against doing so. This is because eating a lot of salads and raw foods expends a lot of extra heat in your body in order to digest it and can result in cold in the interior. Cold foods can also damage the functioning of your Spleen Qi, and therefore may cause digestive problems, bloating, water retention and even weight gain. So - I advise salads to my patients only in moderation and when I eat salads I often try and make sure that at least some of the ingredients are cooked (see my Marinated Tofu, Broad Bean and Broccoli Salad, my Glass Noodle, Green Bean and Black Fungus Salad, or my White Bean Salad).

However, this salad doesn't involve cooking any of the ingredients, therefore I recommend not having it too often. Whenever I eat a salad like this I always drink a cup of herbal tea with it to help warm up my Stomach and aid in the digestion of the food. In this case the tea you should drink is my Cabbage-Is-My-Friend Tea, there are two reasons for this. As this salad contains raw cabbage I would recommend having a couple of cups of this tea with and after your salad for a carminative (anti-flatulent) affect. Secondly, it contains herbs which aid in digestion, therefore may help prevent any damage to your Spleen Qi caused by the cold nature of the foods. 

Ingredients

1 cup shredded iceberg lettuce

1 1/2 cups shredded green cabbage

1 carrot, grated

1 small cucumber, finely diced

1/2 punnet cherry tomatoes, sliced in half

1x 300g can of chickpeas, drained and rinsed

2 tsp pepitas

1/2 lemon

1 tbsp unhulled tahini

1 clove garlic

2 tsp soy sauce (substitute tamari to make this salad gluten free)

Cracked Pepper, to taste

To Make

1. Combine the lettuce, cabbage, carrot, cucumber and chickpeas in a bowl and mix well to combine.

2. Sprinkle the cherry tomatoes and pepitas over the top.

3. Add a little zest from the lemon.

4. In a small bowl or cup, combine the tahini, lemon juice (from the half lemon) and garlic and mix quite vigorously until the tahini is all smooth and has turned a paler colour (due to the lemon juice). Add the soy sauce and mix well to combine. Add pepper to taste (you will not need to add salt, as the soy sauce is salty enough).

5. Drizzle the dressing over the salad and toss to combine. Eat straight away.

Serves 2

Black Forest Shots

Black Forest Cake always reminds me of my childhood because my mum made the best one ever and my brother used to request it as his birthday cake every single year without fail. However, doing shots doesn't remind me of my childhood at all because I had good parents. So... I guess this recipe is like combining the past with the future. Or something wanky like that. Really though - all you need to know is that these are sooo much easier and faster to make than a Black Forest Cake. Plus, what could be cooler than eating a whole (mostly liquid) cake in one mouthful? There is also something quite fun about shots which you have to chew as you take them. So, with that random group of good points about these shots, you can see that you obviously have to try them. I'm also planning Lamington Shots and Tiramisu Shots to go up at some stage in the same series.

Ingredients (per shot)

1 pitted morello cherry (see note below - for the love of god read the note!)

½ measure vanilla vodka

½ measure cherry brandy

2 tsp of the juice from the jar or can of morello cherries

1 tsp chocolate ganache (see recipe below)

2 tsp coconut milk

Chocolate Ganache (makes quite a big batch so if you are only making a few shots you may want to halve it)

1/3 cup soy milk

100g dark chocolate, broken up into small pieces

To Make

1. To make the ganache, heat the soy milk in a small saucepan until small bubbles start to appear on the outer edge of the milk (don’t let it boil). Remove from the heat and stir in the broken up chocolate. Stir until the chocolate is all melted and the ganache is deliciously glossy (don’t put it back on the heat!). Allow to cool slightly.

2. Put the morello cherry in the bottom of the shot glass.

3. Add the vanilla vodka, cherry brandy and morello cherry juice.

4. Add a generous teaspoon of chocolate ganache to each glass (it will sink into the middle of the booze).

5. Pour the coconut milk over the shot glass over the back of a teaspoon to make it sit at the top of the shot.

6. Consume immediately and make another :)

NOTE: I would highly recommend checking each cherry to make sure that it is in fact pitted before putting it in the shot, as my experience of buying jars of pitted morello cherries is that roughly 1/4 of the cherries in the jar actually still have pits in them. So - if you don't want your cocktail party guests choking on cherry pits I recommend checking by inserting a sharp knife or skewer into the cherry first.

This post is part of the Death By Chocolate Sweet Adventures Blog Hop, click on the list of posts below or on this badge to see all the other entries submitted to the hop:

P.S. I can't even tell you how many times I accidentally typed shit instead of shot when writing up this post - hopefully I noticed them all and changed them......

Cabbage-Is-My-Friend Tea

If you read this blog much then you'll notice an influx of cabbage over the last week or so. This is partly due to lots of delicious cabbage-y Croatian recipes, and partly due to the fact that we had lots of cabbage left over from all out Croatian cabbage cooking to use up. Now, cabbage is delicious - however, there is a catch and you all know what it is. So, in order to address this problem I have devised this carminative tea of fennel seeds, caraway seeds and fenugreek which is not only delicious but eases the digestion and allows you to eat as much cabbage as you like without stinking out the whole world. Hurray!

Not only is this tea carminative but it's also very good for you in other regards as well - because all these ingredients have fantastic properties which can be beneficial to your health*:

Fennel Seeds:

1) Can be a great source of antioxidants, amino acids, fatty acids, vitamins (including B group), as well as calcium, potassium, phosphorus, magnesium, folate, molybdenum and many other useful elements and nutrients.

2) Has been shown to produce anti-spasmodic, pain-reducing and fever-reducing effects

3) Can help stimulate milk flow in breast feeding women

4) Is a natural treatment for problems of digestion - including bloating, flatulence, constipation, IBS, cramping and pain of the abdomen

5) Can help regulate oestrogen in women and alleviate PMS symptoms

6) Can act as an aphrodisiac and increase libido

7) Is an effective weight loss aid

Caraway Seeds:

1) Treat digestive disorders such as diarrhoea, colic, flatulance, cramps and poor appetite.

2) Can help ease cramps during the menstrual cycle and can act as a natural pain reliever for dysmenorrhoea (period pain)

3) Can increase the production of milk in breastfeeding women

4) Can help fight bronchitis and coughing

Fenugreek:

1) Can lessen mood fluctuations and PMS during the menstrual period

2) Can increase libido

3) Improves digestion and metabolism, including treating flatulence, acid reflux, bloating and constipation (acts as a milk laxative)

4) May help regulate blood sugar levels and stimulate production of insulin

5) May help lower high cholesterol levels

6) Eliminates bad breath

What a wonderful lot of properties! Now you see why you should be drinking down this tea even if you haven't had any cabbage recently!

Ingredients

1 tsp fennel seeds

1/2 tsp caraway seeds

1/2 tsp whole fenugreek

To Make

1. Put all ingredients in a tea pot and fill the pot with boiling hot water. Allow to steep for 4-5 minutes.

2. Strain into a mug and drink.

3. Refill the tea pot with more boiling water next time you want a cup of tea - you can use the same set of seeds all day and keep refilling, although you may find you will need to steep for slightly longer times as the day goes on.

*A small disclaimer on this: most of this information was gathered from various reputable websites, however, I did not have the time to trawl through research papers to find supporting evidence to these claims. Therefore you should take it as you would take any information you read on the internet (with a grain of salt). But not literally of course, because I don't think this delicious tea needs any salt added.

Posna Sarma (Croatian Rice-filled Cabbage Rolls)

You know how sometimes you just make a dish and think to yourself: "Man, that looks like some delicious ugly". Well this is one of those dishes, there wasn't much I could really do to it to make it photography pretty but you'll just have to take it on taste value rather than looks - and in order to do that you'll have to cook of of course :) This is now recipe number 4 in our delicious exploration of Croatian foods and I have been enjoying myself sooooooo much trying lots of new foods (to check out our other recipes, check the thumbnails at the bottom of the post), I have to say I have never made cabbage rolls before but now I see they are a delicious, low carb and unprocessed option instead of cannelloni. These ones are stuffed with a lovely rice and vegetable mix but you could substitute any kind of cannelloni style filling - this is particularly good for me as I have a severe pasta weakness and am trying to cut myself down to having pasta only twice a week - it's hard.

On the other hand, if you are a bit scared of cabbage due to it's flatulent reputation (not entirely unjustified) - they I suggest you have this with some of our Cabbage-Is-My-Friend Tea which will take care of any worries you have in that area so that you can happily enjoy cabbage as frequently as you like!

Ingredients

3 tbsp olive oil

1 onion, finely chopped

2 carrots, finely diced

1 rib celery, finely diced

1 cup uncooked long grain rice, rinsed

3 tomatoes, chopped

1 tsp dried marjoram

1 tbsp fresh oregano (or substitute 1 tsp dried)

3 cloves garlic, finely chopped

Salt and pepper to taste

1 whole cabbage

1 tin sauerkraut

1 can tomato soup (check to make sure it’s vegan)

1 can pureed tomatoes

1 cup water

To Make

1. Preheat the oven to about 180 degrees celcius.

2. Heat oil in a large saucepan or frypan and sauté the onions until translucent. Add the carrot and celery and continue to sauté until the vegies are softened, about 10 mins on a medium-low heat.

3. Add the rice, tomatoes, herbs and seasonings plus 1 cup water to the saucepan and cook, covered, on a low heat for 10-15b minutes. The rice should start to soften but not be completely cooked.  Remove from the heat and stir the chopped garlic through.

4. Meanwhile, pull the tough outer leaves off the cabbage and discard. Wash thoroughly and steam the whole cabbage for 10 minutes or so until the outer leaves are softened and easier to pull away.

5. Remove as many of the outer leaves as you can (until you reach the inner parts which are not as well cooked) and then put the rest of the cabbage back in the steamer for another 5 mins so that you can remove more of the leaves.

6.  Cut the thick stems out of the cabbage leaves and begin rolling. Add about 2 tablespoons of rice mix to the edge of the cabbage leaf and roll over once. Fold in both of the edges and then continue rolling to the end. Put aside. Keep going until you use up the rice filling (or you have to stop because your dish isn’t going to be big enough for all of them.

7. Take some of the leftover centre part of the cabbage and slice it very thinly. Layer this cabbage along the bottom of a big lasagne/casserole dish. Next spread the sauerkraut (drained if necessary) over the top of the cabbage.

8. Place your cabbage rolls over the top of the cabbage and sauerkraut, tucking them in close to each other so that they hold each other together, like this:

9.  Mix the tomato soup, tomato puree and ½ cup water together and pour over the top of the cabbage rolls. Cover with aluminium foil and bake for 30 minutes.

10. After 30 minutes remove the aluminium foil and continue to bake for another 20 minutes (keeping your eye on it to make sure the tops of the cabbage rolls don’t burn.

11. Remove from the oven and let stand for about 10-20 minutes before serving.

I made 12 cabbage rolls, however I had some of the rice mix and some cabbage left over – I was more restricted by the size of my baking dish.  Feeds about 6 on its own or 12 if served as part of a group meal.  Serve with Croatian Blitva.

Prepares well in advance and can be frozen.

Check out our other recipes for Croatia Month:

Poppy Seed and Almond Kolache

YumuşacıkPoğaça 

(Savoury buns filled with creamy potato and pickles!)

Paprenjaci 

(Cracked Pepper Biscuits)

Makovnjaca

(Poppy Seed Strudel)

Croatian Pizza

Cabbage, Broad Bean and Caraway Soup

You'll be seeing a lot of cabbage recipes from us this month - mostly because many of the savoury vegan-friendly Croatian recipes we found were of the cabbage variety (although this recipe itself is not Croatian - I just invented it to use up a big bit of cabbage left on my fridge from my Croatian cooking). However, that isn't a bad thing at all because I think that this is the first cabbage recipe we have posted on this blog, so in essence we are filling a void. 

Unfortunately cabbage gets a very bad reputation amongst most people because of bad experiences with bad boiled cabbage and because of it's ability to cause gas. However - you shouldn't fear either of these because a) cabbage cooked properly is delicious and b) there are several carminative herbs and spices you can add in the cooking process to reduce this. This recipe uses caraway seeds as the carminative agent, however, I have read that cumin, sage, tarragon, fennel, thyme, aniseed, marjoram, basil, bergamot, chamomile, nutmeg, dill, cloves, garlic, coriander, allspice, cinnamon, ginger, juniper, rosemary, savory, oregano, mint or peppermint can also be used - although I haven't tried all of these so give me feedback if you do :) So, take this knowledge in hand and fear no more about cabbage - now you possess the knowledge to go bravely (without splitting your infinitives!) where no cabbageophobe has even gone before... cabbage soup!

However, even if that doens't convince you to stop worrying about cabbage giving you gas then you can take even further precautions by ending or starting any meal that contains cabbage with our delicious Cabbage-Is-My-Friend Tea which will take care of any worries you have in that area so that you can happily enjoy cabbage as frequently as you like!

Ingredients

1 onion, slices

1 tbsp olive oil

1/4 green cabbage (or more of you have it), finely sliced

1 generous tsp caraway seeds

1/2 tsp cumin

1/2 tsp smoky paprika

2 potatoes, washed, peeled and thinly sliced

1L vegetable stock

1 cup fresh or frozen broad beans

1 tbsp soy sauce (or substitute salt to taste)

To Make:

1. Heat the olive oil in a large soup pot and sauté the onion until soft. Add the cabbage and continue to sauté another 3-5 mins.

2. Add the spices and mix thorough well. Add the vegetable stock, potatoes and broad beans and bring to the boil.

3. Lower the heat and simmer for about 20-30 minutes. Add soy sauce and any other seasonings to taste.

4. When all vegetables are cooked well turn off the heat and allow to cool for a little while before blending it until very smooth in a blender or food processor (or with a hand held stick blender if you prefer a chunkier texture). 

5. Serve with some whole caraway sprinkled on top.

Serves 4, and perfect as a snack in a mug

This is also part of the Great Vegan Soup-Off Blog Hop- check out the other entries below!

Paprenjaci (Croatian Pepper Biscuits)

These traditional Croatian pepper cookies are often served at Christmas, but I think they’re so delicious a batch would be welcome all year round! Usually these biscuits would be made with traditional biscuit cutters, so these forked versions aren’t too authentic in the shape department. However, they are authentic in the deliciousness department, and I’m pretty sure that this department wins over all other departments.


Ingredients:
180g Nuttelex
½ cup and 2 Tbsp of sugar
2 Tbsp of golden syrup
1 Tbsp of freshly cracked pepper
1 tsp of ground cloves
2 tsp of ground cinnamon
1 tsp of ground nutmeg
¼ cup of almond meal or finely chopped walnuts
1 ¾ cups of flour

How to make:

1. Cream the nuttelex, sugar and golden syrup in a large bowl.
2. Add the spices and almond meal to the creamed mixture and mix well.
3. Add the flour and mix with your hands, until all ingredients are well combined and have formed a ball of dough.
4. Chill dough for 1 hour in the fridge.
5. Heat oven to 180°c and line a tray with baking paper
6. Roll dough into small balls and press down gently on each side with a fork, so that they look something like this:

7. Bake for 20-25 minutes, cool and serve!

Makes around 15 biscuits.

Check out our other recipes for Croatia Month:

Poppy Seed and Almond Kolache

Yumuşacık Poğaça 
(Savoury buns filled with creamy potato and pickles!)

Posna Sarma

(Rice-filled cabbage rolls)

Makovnjaca

(Poppy Seed Strudel)

Croatian Pizza

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Yumuşacık Poğaça (Croatian fluffy savoury buns)

A-dizzle and I recently had a whole group of people over to help us eat all our Croatian food. Not only was this a particularly fun one to make with helpers but it was also by far the most popular savoury dish we served. There is something so fun about inviting people over and then getting them to help you with the food and we had a great time rolling these out, check it:

Poğaça is a savoury bread/pastry eaten in Croatia, Bulgaria, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Slovenia, FYR Macedonia, Serbia, Montenegro, Hungary, Greece  (where its called bougatsa Μπουγάτσα) and Turkey with variations.Typically it is filled with feta cheese, however, this isn't a very vegan option so these ones have a vegan filling of my own devising, comprising of creamy potatoes, grated pickles and chopped parsley - it was such a hit that my guests were eating the leftover filling straight out of the saucepan.

I have to give a big thank you to the fantastic @rhelune for sending me the idea for these, and also for all the other awesome advice and recipes sent to me via twitter.

Poğaça with Potato and Pickles

Ingredients

Dough

4 cups flour

¼ cup warm soy milk
1x 7g sachet dry instant yeast
½ cup canola oil
1 tbsp sugar
¾ cup mineral water

Filling

2 potatoes, peeled and washed

1 onion, finely chopped

1 tbsp nuttelex

2 pickled cucumbers

1 bunch continental parsley

Sea salt, to taste

Plus

Soy milk, to brush on top

Poppy seeds

To Make

Dough

1. Mix sugar and yeast with warm milk. Combine all the dough ingredients including this milk mixture and mix them well. You can add a little more flour or mineral water if either of them is not enough. You should have a pliable and nonsticky dough. 

2. Cover it with a moist cloth and let it rest in a warm spot for 45 min.

Filling

1.  Chop the potatoes and boil them in plenty of water until completely cooked.

2. Melt nuttelex in a saucepan and sauté the onions until translucent and soft.

3. Coarsely grate the pickled cucmubers and add to the onions. Sauté until the onions are completely cooked. Remove from the heat. Add the potatoes and mash with a potato masher (doesn’t have to be smooth, leave it chunky).

4. Finely chop the parsley and stir through the filling with the sea salt.

Assembly

1. Preheat the oven to 180 Degrees

2. Take a small piece from the dough and flatten it with your hands. You can do this on the counter. Put a tsp of potato mixture on it and close it up folding the edges upwards like a bundle. Do the same for the rest of the dough. 

3. Place a parchment paper in a baking tray and place the poğaça on it. The folded side of  poğaça should be at the bottom to have a ball shape. This is best done with help :) Try to make them all the same size, however, as you can see below, we didn't really succeed due to multiple rollers, but it didn't affect their cooking.

4. Brush the tops with milk and sprinkle with poppy seeds.

5. Bake for 20-25 mins or until they are nice and golden on top. Serve straight out of the oven or allow to cool to room temperature (both delicious).

Makes 12.

Check out our other recipes for Croatia Month:

Poppy Seed and Almond Kolache

Paprenjaci

(Cracked Pepper Biscuits)

Posna Sarma

(Rice filled cabbage rolls)

Makovnjaca
(Poppy Seed Strudel)

Croatian Pizza

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Poppy Seed and Almond Kolache (Croatian Pastries)

Welcome to Croatian Month on Gormandize with A-dizzle and K-bobo! We're both pretty crazy about world food and about discovering new dishes, new ingredients and new cooking methods, so a couple of months ago we decided that, starting in 2012, we would feature the cuisine of a different country each month in addition to our regular recipes so that we could learn more about countries whose cuisine is less celebrated internationally. We asked readers for suggestions and came away with a great list of countries to feature over the upcoming months. If you'd like to suggest a country for us to add to the list just visit this blog post and post us a comment!

So, we begin with Croatia. Firstly I'd like to point out that neither A-dizzle nor myself have ever been to Croatia (YET!), therefore we have done our best to research Croatian cuisine from our computers mostly (and from talking to people who have been to Croatia!). So, if you are Croatian or know a lot about Croatian food please feel free to comment or contact us with feedback on the food that we post or with ideas for recipes we can include. My first post of Croatian delights is Poppy seed Kolache - which I made yesterday to serve to my NYE guests. They were delicious and were quite popular with the guests. My version is, of course, vegan and ever so slightly modified :)

Ingredients

Pastry:

3 cups flour

1/2 cup ground almonds

1 1/2 tsp baking powder

1 tbsp tapioca flour (arrowroot)

1/4 tsp salt

1/2 cup sugar

1 tbsp lemon zest

1 cup nuttelex (or other non-dairy margarine or butter)

2 tbsp lemon juice

6 tbsp water

Filling:

1 cup poppy seeds

1/3 cup apricot jam

3/4 cup soy milk

1/3 cup chopped dates

1/2 cup chopped almonds (chop and then measure!)

1/4 tsp cinnamon

2 tbsp maple syrup

To Make:

1. Preheat the oven to about 180 degrees C.

2. Mix the flour, ground almonds, baking powder, salt, sugar, arrowroot and lemon zest well in a large bowl.

3. Add the nuttelex in small pieces and then rub into the flour mixture using your hands until the mixture looks like coarse breadcrumbs.

4. Make a well in the centre and add the lemon juice and 4 tbsp water. Mix well (probably easiest to keep using your hands). Add the rest of the water a tablespoon at a time. The pastry should make a stiff dough which stays together in a ball when kneaded. Turn onto a floured surface and knead briefly. Put aside.

5. Combine all the ingredients of the poppy seed filling except the almonds and maple syrup in a small saucepan.

6. Put on a low heat and bring to a simmer. Simmer until all the liquid is absorbed and the mix becomes a stiff paste.Remove from heat and stir through the almonds and maple syrup.

7. Cut yourself a piece of paper into an 8cm by 8cm square to use as a template (this is optional, but it is good to ensure that all your kolache end up the same size).

8. Roll out 1/4 of the pastry dough to about 1/2 cm thick and cut it into squares using the template. There should be plenty of dough so you shouldn't need to scrounge extra squares out of tiny left over bits.

9. Pace 2 tsp of the filling along the centre of the square diagonally (see pic):

10. Bring the two corners over the top and press down gently on them to form a cylinder (see pic):

11. Repeat with using up the rest of the filling mix (you may have a bit of pastry dough left over - you can save this and make another batch of filling sometime or you can use it up by using anything you like in the fillling - such as fruit [fresh or canned], nuts or chocolate).

12. Place on a baking tray lined with greaseproof paper and bake in the oven for 20-22 minutes (you will need to turn the tray around about 15 minutes into the baking time to ensure even cooking).

13. Cool on the tray before serving. You may like to dust them with some icing sugar for prettiness before serving (I didn't have any!!).

Makes about 20 kolache (plus some left over pastry dough)

Check out our other recipes for Croatia Month:

Yumuşacık Poğaça 

(Savoury buns filled with creamy potato and pickles!)

Paprenjaci

(Cracked Pepper Biscuits)

Posna Sarma

(Rice-filled cabbage rolls)

Makovnjaca

(Poppy Seed Strudel)

Croatian Pizza

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