Eating History: Chodský Koláč (1890)

Chodský koláč is a sweet pastry with distinguishable decoration. It is named after the western part of what is now the Czech Republic, a very unique cultural region at the borders with Germany. Although the first recorded recipe is from the year 1890, it is believed, that the pastry had been a traditional part of the local cuisine for at least a century before.

*Linguistic note: you might sometimes see the word kolaces/kolaches (pl.) in English texts referring to this type of traditional Czech pastry. This is wrong, as the word "koláče" is plural already ("koláč" in singular), so no need to add the "s" :-)

The following amounts have been converted to US measurement units exactly. For the purpose of simplification, you can round them up or down in case of 0.1 difference (4.9 to 5.0; 7.1 to 7.0).

Dough

1. 430 g/15.2 oz of semi-coarse flour (see Czech Flour Guide) - can be substituted by all-purpose flour
2. 140 g/4.9 oz of unsalted butter
3. 100 g/3.5 oz of krupice sugar (superfine, see Czech Sugar Guide)
4. 3 eggs at room temperature
5. 35 ml/1.6 oz of Czech rum - can be substituted by other types of rum even if there's nothing else with the same aroma (please don't let this stop you making the pastry!)
6. 35 ml/1.6 oz of heavy cream
7. zest from 1/2 lemon
8. pinch of salt
9. 45 g/1.6 oz of yeast/3 tbsp of dried yeast
10. 10 tbsp of milk

Depending on which country you come from, you might be tempted to add more sugar to the dough. Remember though, the koláče dough isn’t supposed to be too sweet, so stick to the given amount.

Filling – Cheese

1. 500 g/17.6 oz of quark cheese (tvaroh) - can be substituted by other cream cheese
2. 3 eggs
3. 1 tbsp of lemon zest
4. 140 g/4.9 of sugar
5. 1-2 tbsp of Czech rum - can be substituted by other types of rum
6. optional: 3 tbsp of vanilla pudding powder
7. optional: heavy cream

Especially if you use more liquid quark cheese, you might not need the heavy cream but have the vanilla pudding powder at hand to thicken the filling. If you’re using more dry quark, use cream and/or rum to make it more liquid. The resulting texture should be smooth, not too thick and not too liquid, so these amounts are just approximate, have more at hand.

Filling – Poppy seed

1. 200 g/7.1 oz of ground poppy seed
2. 150 g/5.3 oz of powder sugar
3. 350 ml/11.8 oz of milk
4. 1 tsp of ground cinnamon

Add sugar to taste and have more milk and poppy seed at hand to reach the desired thickness.

Filling – Povidla

1. 400 g/14.1 oz of povidla (very thick slowly baked plum jam) - can be substituted by regular plum jam
2. optional: 1-2 tbsp of Czech rum

Glaze and Decoration

1. 1 egg
2. 100 ml of milk
3. 40 ml of Czech rum
4. raisins soaked with rum over night
5. Almond halves or slices
6. optional: vanilla sugar
7. optional: whipped cream

Other

1. Rolling pin
2. Cake decorating set – you can also just use a plastic bag with cut corner

Heat up the milk to slightly warm, stir in the yeast and add 1 tbsp of sugar and 1 tbsp of flour. Cover and let the yeast start rising.

In a large bowl, combine flour, sugar, salt and lemon zest. Then add the yeast started, eggs, butter (diced), rum and cream and knead until you have a lightly sticky and uniform dough. Cover the bowl and let the dough double in volume. Then split the dough in four or five equal parts, make small loafs, sprinkle them with some flour, cover and let them rise some more. Meanwhile, prepare the filling.

To make the cheese filling, separate egg whites from yolks and beat the egg whites until firm. Combine the tvaroh and egg yolks, sugar, lemon zest and rum. Thicken with vanilla pudding powder, thin down with cream and/or more rum. Then stir in the whisked egg whites.

To prepare poppy seed filling, place the ground poppy seed, milk, sugar and cinnamon in a sauce pan and bring to a simmer while stirring. Let is simmer while stirring until the poppy seed mixture has no visible paddles of milk in it and has the right consistency to decorate with. This might take a little practice, so just try how your mixture works with your cake decorating set, you can always thicken or thin it down later.

As for povidla, homemade is best but if you can’t get any, even plum/prune jam will do. You can thin it down with some rum or just use your povidla as they are.

Do the following with each piece of dough: Roll it out round and thin on a piece of baking paper. The piece you see in the picture was less than 5 mm/0.2 in and it was just the perfect width when baked. Just bear in mind that the dough will raise a lot during the baking, so you have to roll it out thin.

At this point, transfer sheet with the rolled out dough to the baking tray.

I recommend glazing the edges with whisked egg first. If you forget or just want to, you can do this later as well.

Spread a nice thick layer of cheese filling over the cake, leaving only about 1 cm/0.4 in of edge.

Fill your cake decorating set with the two remaining fillings. I recommend having one set for each filling so you don’t need to wash the tip constantly as you switch between the fillings.

The decoration is up to you. I like to start with tracing the main ornament.

Create ornaments with povidla and poppy seed.

As I mentioned, in Upper Chodsko, the decoration is done in stripes. Although I fist covered the cake with cheese and then added stripes of povidla and poppy seed, the traditional way to do this would be to add the cheese also in stripes.

Decorate also with almonds and raisins. I skipped the latter because no one in our family eats raisins, they would just end up in the trash, so I make chodské koláče without them.

Instead of raisins, I add small portions of the filling to where I would otherwise place the raisins. If you haven’t yet, glaze the edges of the cake with whisked egg.

Preheat your oven to 180°C/356°F and bake each cake for 20 minutes or until the edges of the cake are nicely golden-brown (not yellow, that’s underbaked!).

While the cakes bake, mix and heat up the cream and rum for glazing.

Drizzle the cake with the mixture while its still hot. It will soak into the cake and make it soft. You can also sprinkle it with vanilla sugar. And if you want to make Krchlebské koláče, decorate also with whipped cream.