Cheese kolaches
58 min · 11 g protein · 205 cals / serving
The Czech-Texan bakery pastry: soft, slightly sweet yeast buns with a deep well pressed into each and filled with a lemony sweet cheese filling, baked golden and dusted with sugar. The filling is the traditional one, dry curd cottage cheese with a little cream cheese and egg yolk, and the dough is enriched with Greek yogurt and a scoop of protein powder in place of most of the butter, so the buns are tender and soft with a faint tang.
Ingredients
Dough
- 1/3 cup skim milk, lukewarm
- 2 1/4 tsp (1 packet) active dry yeast
- 3 tbsp granulated sugar
- 1/2 cup nonfat Greek yogurt, at room temperature
- 1 egg, at room temperature
- 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour, plus a little for shaping
- 1 scoop whey protein, unflavoured or vanilla
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 2 tbsp butter, very soft
Cheese filling
- 2 1/2 cups (12 oz) dry curd cottage cheese, or 1% cottage cheese, drained in a sieve for 30 minutes
- 3 tbsp light cream cheese, softened
- 1/4 cup + 1 tbsp granulated sugar
- 2 tsp cornstarch
- 1 tsp lemon zest, finely grated
- 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
To finish
- 1 tbsp skim milk, for brushing
- 1 tbsp powdered sugar, for dusting
Steps
- Stir the yeast and a pinch of the sugar into the lukewarm milk (about 99°F) and leave 5 minutes until foamy. Add the rest of the dough sugar, the yogurt and the egg, then the flour, protein powder and salt, and knead 8 minutes by hand or with a dough hook, adding the soft butter for the last 2 minutes. The dough should be soft and slightly sticky. Cover and leave somewhere warm for about an hour, until doubled.
- Line two baking sheets. Divide the dough into 12 pieces, roll each into a smooth ball and set them 2 inch apart. Flatten each slightly, cover and leave 30 minutes, until puffy.
- Meanwhile, blend or mash the cottage cheese until fairly smooth, then beat in the cream cheese, sugar, egg yolk, cornstarch, lemon zest and vanilla.
- Heat the oven to 375°F. With two fingers or the bottom of a small glass dipped in flour, press a deep, wide well into the centre of each bun, leaving a thick rim. Spoon a heaped 2 tablespoons of the cheese filling into each well and brush the rims with milk.
- Bake 15–18 minutes, until the buns are golden and the filling is set. Cool on the sheet for 10 minutes and dust the rims with powdered sugar. Best warm, the day they are made.
Good to know
Dry curd or regular cottage cheese?
Dry curd is the traditional choice because it has almost no liquid, so the filling stays put. Regular 1% cottage cheese works well if you drain it in a sieve for 30 minutes and then blend it; skip the draining and the filling runs.
Can I fill some with fruit, or add a crumb topping?
Yes, kolache bakeries always offer both. Fill a few with a thick jam or poppy seed filling, or top the cheese with a few blueberries; a runny jam boils over, so use a thick one. For the Czech crumb topping (posypka), rub 2 tablespoons each of flour and sugar with 1 tablespoon of cold butter and scatter it over before baking.
Can I make them richer?
Bakery kolache dough often uses twice the butter. Doubling it to 4 tablespoons gives a softer, richer bun, at about 18 instead of 25.
Alternative
Per
- Calories
- 245
- Protein
- (21%)
- 13 g
- Fat
- (19%)
- 5 g
- Carbohydrates
- (60%)
- 37 g
- of which sugar
- 13 g
- Fiber
- 1 g
- Sodium
- 309 mg
More breakfast
Computed from the ingredients with our published formula, not yet kitchen-tested. How
As written, 2465 kcal goes into the pot and 1167 g of ingredients comes out as about 1005 g of food: 245 kcal per 100 g. Cooking moves water and energy density is the score's biggest lever, so the dish is scored as cooked, not as an average of its parts. Every ingredient links to its food page, with the same data and score. The label's percentages are each macronutrient's share of the calories. The full formula.