Of what I learned about ethnic cooking is that a recipe may or may not be authentic even within the perimeters of regional variations. It is certainly true of Hungarian cuisine; it must be so with others. Without knowing I could not give these buns an anglicized Russian title. These may be in the style of or even the real thing, but I wouldn’t know the difference. Nevertheless they are delicious. I made them yesterday and maybe seven is left…the man can’t seem to keep away from them. I found it on mom’s dish.com. I assumed however that the filling would produce a huge leftover, so I cut it down and in the end I had the perfect amount to fill all the buns. Similarly, I had no farmers cheese, only cottage cheese and so I added some flour to stabilize the filling. It’s a good thing, because cottage cheese is a staple in North America and is far less expensive than the often hard to find farmers cheese.
RUSSIAN CREAMCHEESE BUNS
Buns:
3 eggs
1/2 cups sugar
1/2 tsp salt
3 Tbsp mayonnaise [not light]
1-1/2 Tbsp instant yeast
4-1/2 to 5 cups flour
2 cups lukewarm milk
3 Tbsp oil
melted butter for greasing and buttering
1 egg for egg wash
Filling:
1 cup cottage cheese
1/2 cup 33% cream cheese
1/8 cup sugar
1 pkg. vanilla sugar
1 egg
5 Tbsp flour
handful of raisins, optional
• Whisk together eggs, sugar, salt and mayonnaise.
• In a separate bowl, whisk together flour and yeast.
• Alternatively add the flour mixture and the lukewarm milk to the egg mixture half a cup at the time.
• With a dough hook, beat the dough for 7-8 minutes until the dough clears the side of the bowl. Dough should be very elastic
• Or beat vigorously with a large wooden spoon for ten minutes to develop the gluten.
• Transfer the dough to a lightly floured board and form into a ball.
• Place the dough in a well buttered bowl, turn over and let it rise for 1 hour.
• Meanwhile prepare the filling.
• Combine ingredients, reserving the raisins.
• Line the baking sheets with parchment paper. [I used 3]
• After the dough rises, punch down and form into 30 balls.
• Arrange balls on the parchment lined baking sheets and press down, forming disks.
• Lightly butter the disks.
• Let the disks rise for 30 minutes and then press a cup into the dough creating a crater.
• Fill the craters with the prepared filling and press a few raisins into the filling.
• Bake for 30 minutes or until light golden brown. Do not brown.
• Remove from the oven and immediately brush the sides with egg wash. This will make the sides of the buns soft while the bottoms remain crispy.
