Kolacky Cookies

I'm in a baking spree for the past couple of days. I made Chatti Pathiri, the Indian version of Turkish Baklava, yesterday for Indian Cooking Challenge and today I made these melt in your mouth European Kolacky Cookies for this week's 'Cooking from Cookbook Challenge'.
I bought some cherry pie filling a while back when I was making this Black Forest Cake. I had some leftover in the fridge that needed to be used up. I saved the wrapper from the container (Solo brand) because it had 2 recipes using the pie filling. These Kolacky cookies caught my eye because it had very few ingredients and seemed easy enough to make.

The filling for these cookies can be just about anything. Any flavored pie filling or jam or fruit preserves would work. Even chocolate-hazelnut spread would be great. I made a batch with cherry pie filling and the other with Nutella. I was worried that the filling would melt and ooze out after baking, but they held up pretty good and there was no melting whatsoever.

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Eggless Black Forest Cake

Blogging Marathon# 33: Week 3/ Day 3
Theme: Eggless Cakes
Dish: Eggless Black Forest Cake

For the third day of BM# 33, we are celebrating my husband's birthday with an eggless Black Forest Cake. He was travelling on his actual birthday, so we are celebrating it over the weekend. 

Black forest cake brings back fond memories of enjoying time with family and friends back home. This was the usual pastry that we used to order at a bakery next to our school and this was also our favorite cake to order for birthdays and other occasions. Cool cakes, like this Pineapple Cool Cake, are quite famous in India. I remember black forest cake to be cool, moist and juicy -- not too sweet with super light frosting that was simply to die for.

It has been a very long time, infact many many years, that I ate this cake. But I wanted to recreate the cake as I remember it. So first I looked for an eggless chocolate recipe and found this Moist & Soft Chocolate Cake recipe @ Rak's Kitchen. Then I looked for black forest cake recipes for the filling and frosting ideas. After reading through a number of recipes I came up with below recipe.

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Chocolate-Cherry Bread

During our last weekend farmer's market shopping, I bought these fresh organic cherries (they costed me a fortune, but hey, they are worth every penny). So after we devoured the sweet cherries, I decided to make Cherry-Chocolate bread, recipe courtesy Vegetarian times.
After I added yeast to water and mixing all my dry ingredients, I realized there was no butter to use. I wanted to use canola oil, but my sister suggested using "Desi Ghee" (clarified butter). I was skeptical initially, but the bread turned out really good.
Following is the actual recipe.

Ingredients:
0.25oz. pkg. yeast - 1
Sugar - 1/3 cup + 1tbsp
All purpose flour or bread flour - 2 1/3 cups
Unsweetened cocoa powder - 1/2 cup
Unsalted Butter - 2 tbsp melted
Chocolate chips - 1/2 cup
Cherries - 1 1/2 cups pitted

Method:

• Dissolve yeast and 1tbsp sugar to 1 cup of wam water. Let stand 5 miutes or until water is cloudy and smells yeasty.
• Sift remaining sugar, flour, cocoa and salt in a large bowl.
• Add yeast and water to flour and mix well with a wooden spoon till it forms a smooth dough.
• Fold in butter.
  
• Transfer dough to a well-floured surface and knead 7 to 10minutes.
• Pat dough into 10" square. Place cherries and chocolate chips in the center, fold in sides like an envelope. Press edges to seal.
• Gently knead dough to evenly distribute chocolate and cherries throughout. Transfer to oiled bowl, cover and let rise 11/2 hours in warm place.

• Punch dough down and place on a well-floured work surface.
  
• Roll into thick log, then cut log into 16 equal rounds. Roll each round into a tight ball, and place on baking sheet coated with nonstick cooking spray.
• Set baking sheet in warm place, and let balls rise 30 to 45 minutes.

• Preheat oven to 375F. Bake rolls 20 to 25minutes, or until tops appear dry and centers spring back when touched.
  

• Cool 15 minutes before serving.

This is my entry to Sweetnicks ARF/5-a-day Tuesday.