Cream Cheese Kolaches

Hi y'all! To continue my week of trying to bake new things.. The hubs and I stopped recently at our local Kolaches bakery. They had all kinds of different flavors of Kolaches. I got the strawberry cream cheese ones and the hubs got the sausage filled ones. As we were driving along to wherever we were going that day, the hubs looks at me and says " You can make better Kolaches". So there you have it. After we got home that day I searched all our cookbooks for the perfect Kolaches recipe. These were so good! This recipe makes quite a lot though.. I only used half the dough and still got about 2 dozen Kolaches. I'm going to use the other half of the dough for sausage Kolaches.. Should be yummy!

For Dough:

3 packages dry yeast

1/2 cup water

1 teaspoon sugar

1 cup butter

3/4 cup sugar

3 egg yolks

2 3/4 cups milk(scald and cool to lukewarm)

7 1/4 cups flour (more or less)

3 teaspoons salt

 To Make Dough 

 Dissolve yeast in the 1/2 cup warm water in a tall glass, sprinkle with 1 teaspoon sugar and set aside to proof.

 In a large bowl, cream sugar and butter, add egg yolks and salt and mix well.  Add the dissolved yeast, 1 cup of the flour and mix slowly with an electric mixer.

 Add the milk and continue adding as much of the remaining flour as you can mix in with a wooden spoon.

 Knead in enough of the remaining flour to make a moderately soft dough.  Continue kneading until smooth and elastic, about 5 minutes. Place dough in a greased bowl, turn once to grease surface.

 Cover and let rise until doubled in bulk, about 1 to 1 1/2 hours.  Punch dough down and turn out onto lightly floured surface.

 Pinch off egg size portions and roll into a ball using the palm of your hands in circular motion.

 Place about 1 inch apart on greased pans.  Brush kolaches with melted butter, cover with a cloth and let rise until light, about 1 hour. Use your fingers to make an indentation in each ball and fill each opening with about 1 tablespoon of Cream Cheese filling. 

 Sprinkle with posypka topping (optional) and let rise again for 20 minutes.

 Bake in a preheated 425ºF oven for about 10-15 minutes.

 Brush kolaches with melted butter as they come out of the oven.

Cream Cheese Filling:

16 oz cream cheese
2 egg yolks
1/2 cup sugar
1 grated lemon peel
1 teaspoon vanilla

Cream together all ingredients in a medium-sized bowl.

Posypka Topping:

 1 cup sugar
1/2 cup flour
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
2 tablespoon melted butter

Mix all ingredients together until mixture resembles coarse meal.

Eat and enjoy!

Do you have a favorite bakery?