At some point in the history of Texas, there was an influx of Czech immigrants who brought with them recipes from the old country. Fast forward 170+ years, and over time there is a specific pastry that has become as much Texan as Czech, the kolache. In Texas we have savory kolaches, sorta pig-in-a-blanket like concoction (boudin is a personal favorite), and sweet kolaches, in this case, cream cheese. Yeah, yeah, the name should be this or that. Whatever: the true name of the savory is klobasnek, with the plural being klobasniky, but hey, this is Texas and we call them both kolaches, and we also shape them a little differently. So there.
I did my usual thing, read a bunch of recipes and either based on ingredients at hand or methods or just happenstance, made a dish that used something from all three. I closely followed Southern Kitchen’s recipe except I wanted to use the stand blender to knead, so for that I used Restless Chipotle‘s instructions. Restless Chipotle used potato flakes and ginger, and I didn’t. Otherwise the recipes are very similar. But I needed some guidance on the overnight-in-the-fridge rising because I wanted them for breakfast and didn’t want to take 4 hours in the morning, so for that I referenced Cookie Madness’s instructions. Since I’d already started, I didn’t use the same ingredients as Cookie Madness, but might next time since they subbed 1 c milk for 1 c warmed sour cream in the dough.
Texas Cream Cheese Kolaches
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Loading...Ingredients
- 1/2 c butter (8 T), melted then cooled + 2 more T melted later
- 1 c whole milk, heated to 105° - 115° F
- 1/4 c sugar (1/2 c total, but only 1/4 c in the dough)
- 2 1/4 t active dry yeast
- 3-4 cups flour, divided
- 2 eggs, beaten
- 8 oz cream cheese, softened
- 1/4 c sugar
- 1 egg yolk
- vanilla
- stand mixer with both paddle and dough hook attachments
- 2 baking sheets
- parchment paper
Instructions
Melt the butter - allow to cool
Heat milk to 105° - 115° F
Grease a lidded plastic container
In the stand blender bowl, using a wooden spoon, mix sugar, yeast and heated milk
Add 1 cup flour, mix in, cover the bowl with plastic and allow to get very bubbly (40 minutes)
Remove the plastic and add the 1/2 c butter and 2 eggs to the mix, mixing with paddle attachment
Add 1 more cup of flour, keep stirring; add 1/4 cup more flour
At this point, change out the attachment to the dough hook, and keep adding flour slowly until the dough pulls away from the sides
I ended up using about 4 c flour total
Knead with dough hook until dough is smooth and elastic, then knead on high for 30-60 seconds
Remove from mixer and form into a ball - I floured a surface, and plopped it on and kneaded a bit more to be sure when I made an indentation, it popped back out. It was very elastic, like pizza dough.
Grease the ball and put into lidded container (I used butter left in the measuring cup from the melting/cooling process)
IF DOING OVERNIGHT: Refrigerate "overnight" - I did it for about 10 hours.
IF DOING RIGHT THEN: allow to rise until double, about 1 hour
Remove dough to a floured surface, and there are some options: divide into 12-20 pieces, possibly the "size of an egg" or roll 1/2 inch thick then use a cookie cutter to make 18 rounds. I used a dough scraper to cut into non-uniform sized pieces, of which there were 21. I didn't really "shape" them. Because I did overnight, the dough was pretty easy to cut that way.
More options: brush the dough with melted butter (the extra tablespoons) or butter the plastic wrap to cover them, and if refrigerated, allow about 2 hours to rise to double; otherwise, room temp dough should rise in about 1 hour. I brushed the dough with melted butter.
Make the cream cheese filling: blend the softened cream cheese and sugar, add egg yolk and vanilla. There were options here too, like adding lemon zest, or also making a streusel topping with cinnamon. I did neither.
Get out 1 or 2 baking sheets and cover with parchment paper
After doubling in size, make indentations in the center - I tried both with fingers and also with the end of a French rolling pin which is about 1 inch in diameter - and put about 1 T of the cream cheese in the indentation. I think next time I'll try to make the indentation bigger so it's almost more of a cup instead of just a small hole in the center.
Baking instructions: 3 choices again - 350° F, 18-20 minutes OR 375° F, 15-17 minutes OR 425° F, 8-10 minutes. I went with Goldilocks, 375°, but with a full pan it took about 19-20 minutes.
When I started this last night (May 30, 2020), I put a timer on my Apple watch for the 40 minutes yeast-proofing, and somehow accidentally paused the timer and totally forgot about it. I have no earthly idea how long I let that stuff bubble, but more than 1 hour. In case I don’t get the same results, that is why. Also, oddly there’s a salty taste to the dough even though there’s not a speck of salt in this recipe. Hmmm.
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