Sure, the classic dessert recipes for cake and donuts are great and all, but sometimes, you want to try something a little different. Something outside of your usual menu items, you know?
For us, that cuisine of choice is Polish. With its unique blend of savory ingredients into sweet treats, it’s a hotbed of flavor inspiration for both experienced and new cooks and bakers alike.
Of these unique flavors, we have to give a special shout-out to Polish cookies. We loved them so much, that we’ve compiled a list of our favorite recipes for you to check out for yourself!
Seeing as how Polish dessert cuisine might not be a flavor palette that everyone is familiar with, we’re starting this list off with a classic take on this particular dessert.
And with a simple recipe that pretty much anyone can follow, this is a phenomenal classic take on polish cookies!
One of the things that will strike readers first about this dish is the short ingredients list that you’ll find in this recipe.
Accounting for not just the core food items, but both the decorative and filling extras as well, this cookie recipe only has 6 ingredients in it.
6 Ingredients! That’s an amazingly small recipe list for something as widely loved and enjoyed as Polish cookies (also known as Kolaczki, which we will use throughout this list).
These cookies are perfect for pretty much any seasonal occasion. This recipe sells this recipe as the perfect plate of confectionaries to enjoy at Christmas, but they’re also perfect for Easter, Labor Day, or any other holiday you can think of.
One amazing cookie recipe is under our belt, and we’re just getting started!
As we’ve already mentioned, many of these recipes here are old recipes that have been prepared in Poland and by Polish people for decades, if not centuries.
They’re the kind of dishes that we probably learned from our grandmothers, that were passed down to her by her grandmother, and so on.
So there’s a kind of comfort that we get when we get to recreate old recipes like those from our childhood. It’s a comfort that this recipe understands very well!
When cooking this recipe, make sure that you’ve turned the heat on your oil well in advance.
A fried cookie is all well and good, but throwing your dough into a frying pan that hasn’t heated up properly yet is just asking for trouble, or wasting the batter!
One of the stand-out features of a good kolaczki cookie is the jelly/jam preservative filling.
Not only is it a shot of sweet flavor on a piece of light, mellow-flavored pastry, but it is also a great way of adding color to your cookies too.
Plus, considering that the preservative sits on a bed of delicious cream cheese filling, you’ll be surprised just how well this blend of savory and sweet go together!
Aside from the extra flavor that it brings, we also love the sheer amount of versatility that comes with using preservatives in these cookies.
You can use pretty much any flavor of jelly that you’d like, and you’re going to end up with a delightful pastry to enjoy.
Want to go with raspberry or strawberry? Easy, consider it done. Want to go with a citrus marmalade filling instead? No problem. Want to try mango chutney? A little oddball of a choice, but that’s okay too!
As we mentioned in the previous entry, cream cheese is a pretty important ingredient in these Polish kolaczki cookies.
They’re arguably the ingredient that helps bulk out these cookies, as well as give them their distinct flavor profile.
After all, how many other cookies do you know have a strong savory element to them?
Once these cookies have been baked, they’ll last a surprisingly long time too, provided that they’re kept in a cool and dry place.
So, you can either have these cookies baked for that big party or get-together that’s coming up, or you can just have these cookies ready in the cookie tin in the kitchen, for through-the-day snacking.
And, of course, don’t forget the jelling filling too!
If you’re looking for a break from the typical kolaczki recipes, then perhaps you’d like to try out this next Polish party cookie recipe!
The kolache cookie has a lot in common with the classic kolaczki cookies that we’ve been covering, from the recipe for the dough to the heavy use of cream cheese filling as part of the recipe.
Depending on how the word is being latinized, it can sometimes be considered a variation!
However, there are a few key details that make this recipe stand out a little from the kolaczki recipes that we’ve covered.
For one thing, this recipe doesn’t use a jelly preservative, but instead opts for a finely chopped fresh apple filling instead!
The apple is baked along with the dough in the final steps of the recipe, bringing out the sweet flavor into the dough as the juice from the apple seeps in.
Plus, the finely sliced apple adds a whole new kind of texture to this cookie too!
If you’re looking for the perfect cookie recipe to help wake you up in the morning, you can’t go wrong with a batch of good kolaches!
If your household is struggling to come up with the perfect dessert for a Polish-themed thanksgiving meal, then this is a recipe that you ought to try out!
These particular cookies look a lot more like traditional cookies that you would see baked across the world, with a dough that is laid out over your baking tray of choice.
However, with the crushed almonds that are added into the dough early, you have a cookie that has a noticeably more nutty flavor to it than others that you may be more accustomed to.
It’s a small difference, but one that pays off big for this recipe when presented at the dinner table.
The sweetness of the vanilla and sugar is balanced out somewhat, making for a surprisingly good palette cleanser of a dessert.
Pretty good, especially when you think about just how overpoweringly sweet so many dessert dishes are.
So, if you’re looking for a mellower dessert cookie to share on a platter, you know where to look!
The first thing that you’ll notice about this next cookie recipe is its incredible shape!
The curled dough for this cookie might make this cookie look like a crispy dessert, especially if it has been freshly fried.
However, the moment you take a bite into it, with its creamy and eggy flavor, you’ll realize that this dish has more in common with cream puffs when it comes to flavors!
Technically speaking, the khrustyky cookies are sometimes considered a Ukrainian cookie recipe as much as it is a Polish cookie dish.
Considering the proximity each country is to one another, it probably shouldn’t be too surprising that there are exchanges of flavors and recipes too, this recipe included.
This recipe does have a few more ingredients to it, having a total of 8 different ingredients necessary to follow this recipe (9 if you include the oil that you’ll be frying).
However, that is still a surprisingly short list for such an amazing dessert, which can be cooked up in as little as 20 minutes.
All the recipes that we’ve covered produce some incredible cookies to show down on.
However, when it comes to versions of this cookie that are okay, for vegans to snack on, we’ve drawn a blank so far.
Time to change that with this next dish!
That might seem like a challenge, especially when so many of the kolaczki recipes that we’ve covered use not just eggs and butter in the dough, but also a ton of cream cheese as a filling.
However, by using dairy-free yogurt, and dairy-free butter for mixing the dough, you have something that still tastes amazing, with zero animal products to boot!
Final Thoughts
As you can see, Polish cookies are some of the most interesting that you can bake for yourself and your family.
With their surprisingly mellow, even savory flavors, they’re unlike almost any cookies that you’d normally find in the US. All while still delivering a shot of sweet flavor right into your sweet tooth!
All that’s left to do now is to grab some flour, your milk, your eggs, and sour cream filling, and you’re set to go with your Polish dessert evening!
Leave a comment