Koláče - cooking

While I am in the Czech Republic, the name of this blog is 'kids, coffee, and koláč'. This last word, 'koláč', is the name of a Czech pastry. It is a dough filled with poppy-seed paste ('makový koláč'), sweet quark cheese ('tvarohový koláč'), blueberries ('borůvkový koláč') plums ('švestkový koláč'), nuts, or anything else you want. On the top, there is a sweet flour/sugar/butter crumb. This is called 'drobenka' in Czech, or streusel in English (but this is a new word for me). 

I won't provide the quantities or exact recipe for koláč, but I want to explain how we made it. There are many recipes on the internet that you can find with exact quantities (for example here, here, and here).

The recipe below is in the simple past tense.

Making the dough

First, we heated milk in a saucepan. We added yeast and sugar, and mixed it well. We left it to rise for a few minutes. While we waited, we mixed butter, flour, a pinch of salt and more sugar together in a different bowl.

Then, we added the yeast mixture and left it to form a dough in the mixer for around 10 minutes.

When it became a firm dough, we put it in a warm place to rise for an hour and a half.

Making the poppy-seed paste (mak)

First, we ground the poppy-seeds. Then, we boiled them with milk and sugar on a low-heat for 20 minutes. When it cooled down, we added some biscuit crumbs to the paste.

Making the streusel (drobenka)

We heated sugar and butter in a frying pan. Then we added flour and stirred it until it formed a crumb. We left it to cool.

Assembling the koláče 

We pre-heated the oven. While it warmed up, we made small balls from the dough. 

We flattened them, and put the filling in the middle (we used our poppy-seed paste, sweet quark cheese, and some blueberries). Finally, we sprinkled the streusel (drobenka) topping over the pastries.

We baked them in the oven for 15-20 minutes. We let them cool before we ate them.

Eating the koláče 

We enjoyed our koláče with a nice glass of wine. Job done!

Simple past verb revision:

Regular '-ed' past tense:

• heat --> heated
• add --> added
• mix --> mixed
• boil --> boiled
• cool --> cooled
• stir --> stirred*
• form --> formed
• warm --> warmed
• flatten --> flattened
• sprinkle --> sprinkled
• use --> used (not 'useed')
• bake --> baked
• enjoy --> enjoyed

*the final 'r' is doubled here, because of the consonant-vowel-consonant in stir

Irregular past tense:

• leave --> left
• put --> put
• grind --> ground*
• make --> made
• eat --> ate