I hunted down recipes for this myself a while ago - haven't made it yet but this recipe seemed to be the best looking one...

Cream Cheese Kolacky

INGREDIENTS
3 ounces cream cheese
1/2 cup butter, softened
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup any flavor fruit jam
1/3 cup confectioners' sugar for decoration

DIRECTIONS
Mix cream cheese and butter until smooth. Add flour slowly until well blended. Shape into a ball and chill overnight or for several hours.
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (180 degrees C). Roll dough out 1/8 inch thick on a floured pastry board. Cut into 2 1/2 inch squares and place 1/2 tsp (approx) of jam or preserves. Overlap opposite corners and pinch together. Place on ungreased cookie sheets.
Bake for 10 to 12 minutes in the preheated oven. Cool. Sprinkle lightly with confectioner's sugar.

Here is a link that might be useful: CC Kolachy

Oh thanks so much for that recipe sands...It sounds very much like the one my Lithuanian Nana used to make. Of course I don't have her recipe. :-( I always wondered about the cream cheese and how this was once done..back in the 'old' days in the 'old' country. I guess there was homemade cream cheese then.

btw, Nana used to use a pineapple preserve which was so out of character for her taste. Interesting mix for a Lithuanian, imho. Maureen

Here are two old Kolache recipes that come from the MIL of wingboy, a Baking Circle member. The second uses potatoes in the dough (very moist). No filling recipes. That's up to the baker.

Blanche Maggard's Kolaches

3/4 cup shortening
1 cup hot water
1 cup cold water

Melt shortening in hot water then add cold water

1 cup sugar
2 eggs (or 3 yolks)
1 Tblsp salt

Stir together and add to mixture above.

1 square of yeast - put yeast in 1/4 cup lukewarm water, add 1/2 tsp sugar and let set.

6 cups of flour (Add 3 cups flour to the above two mixtures then add yeast mixture. Then add the rest of the flour)

May use after raising 1 hour or place in refrigerator 3 hours or set in refrigerator over night. When ready to use, pinch off dough needed. Shape into rolls, let rise. Then press down in center, just leaving a rim around edges. Fill with desired filling. Let rise a few minutes, then bake until done.

The filling may have a topping of coconut or a mixture of sugar, flour and butter worked together.

Kolache from Ellen Koci Via Blanche Maggard 1997
 1 C scalded milk
 2/3 C sugar
 2/3 C butter
 2 eggs
 1 pkt. Yeast + 1/2 C warm water
 1 C mashed potatoes (1/3 C instant potatoes)
 1 tsp. Grated lemon rind (optional)
 salt
 6 1/2 C sifted flour

Scald milk, add sugar and butter. Let cool.
Add the rest of the ingredients to form stiff dough.
Let rise until doubled. Form into balls, let rise again.
Punch down in middle, fill, let rise a few minutes. Bake at 350 until light brown.

Hmmmm...I could swear I had several Kolacky recipes and I don't have one in my recipe file!

But here is one that I remember seeing before:

Grandpa's Hungarian Kolacky

1 cup butter or margarine, softened
2 (3 ounce) packages cream cheese, softened
2 cups all-purpose flour
assorted baking jelly or pie filling (my favorites are apricot, poppy seed, almond, and raspberry)
powdered sugar

Combine butter and cream cheese completely, add flour and mix well.
Divide dough into 4 balls; wrap each in plastic wrap and chill 24 hours.
Roll out each ball (on floured surface) to 1/8". (Be sure to keep them thin, as this keeps them "light!")
Cut out silver-dollar sized cookies; place on ungreased cookie sheets.
Drop 1/2 teaspoon jelly in center of each cookie and bake at 350* for 7-8 min. (Just until edges begin to brown.) I always bake the cookies flat; however, the edges may be pinched or rolled together as well!
Lightly sift powdered sugar over cookies and serve.

You can also use just about any dried fruit for a filling. Chop up about a c. of dried fruit and put it in a small sauce pan with abt 2 T. melted butter. Stir until all the butter is absorbed by the fruit. Let cool before filling the cookies.

Michelle

Seems to me there are 2 kinds of Kolatchkes or Kolakes or however you spell it.
There is the pastry kind that are small and made often with a cream cheese pastry....and there are those with a rich yeast dough rather like a Danish....and every one is good!
I never have make Kolaches...no Czech or Bohemial blood at all....but I will eat all you make!!
Linda C

Thanks so much for the recipes! I now can experiment to get the right one for the holidays. DH does not mind being a guinea pig for these. Yes, Linda I think you're right. I think there is one that's more like a cookie and one that's more like a danish. I've tried making both now. The cookie recipe I've made twice but the second time I had bad luck with the dough and wound up adding an egg to make the dough workable. The ones I made over the weekend were the yeast dough type, but not sweet enough. DH told me to make an icing for them. He was right. They tasted more like a danish with the icing.

there are those with a rich yeast dough rather like a Danish...

When I was searching around today I found a web site from a Kolachy Contest and the winner's kolachy(s) were like a danish. But I've never in my life seen a kolachy like that before. There were no recipes listed on the site just a few pictures of winners.

But look at the size of these Kolaches!

Michelle

Here is a link that might be useful: Kolache Contest

Michelle,

Those look like the Kolaches that I am used to. DH is Czech and we lived next to the Kolache Capital of the US for a while and also near the Czech capital in NE. Dh loves the poppy seed ones best. Any recipes for poppyseed filling for Kolaches?? The ones I am used to are more like a danish but smaller, may have to try and make some this weekend.

Stacie

We print a program for a big Czech festival and they have three pages of info and recipes on kolaches. I will try to scan and post the info and recipes tomorrow if you would like it. Really, I will get someone else to scan it for me...LOL! I've yet to scan a thing but we have scanners.

David

My Ukrainian husb makes them very much like Sands recipe. We always have them for Easter,

I was looking for some information about Kolaches and ran across this thread, a bit old but not ancient. I think the link below is what you are looking for. These are a sweet yeast pastry filled with a fruit in the middle like my Mom used to make and Grandmas and Aunts and.......That recipe with the cream cheese is NOT the Czech Kolache recipe!

Here is a link that might be useful: Kolache recipe

My mother's mother came to Iowa from Bohemia in about 1885. She passed her never-actually-written-down recipe down to her two daughters by showing, one of them of course, my mother.
I grew up on these special treats, something similar to a danish in shape but smaller, that no neighbor kids in California knew unless my mom had been baking a hundred or so all day. It started very early in the morning because potatoes had to be boiled and mashed finely. The true dough is incredibly light and fluffy because of the potato content. It wasn't a flake dough, just a very light and fluffy yeasty bread, rolled into balls less than golf-ball sized. They were covered with damp dish towels in a warm place to raise. After they rose once, they were pushed down to rise a SECOND time! The risen balls were flatted out a bit into disks and a slight crater was made in the middle. The classic "essential" and most special filling was prune. She used regular dried prunes boiled down to a jam-like mash with water, ground cloves and allspice. Of course all the pits had to be fished out. That's a classic taste I miss Âwith those particular spices. She also made apricot ones using dried apricots cooked down similarly, but I don't recall any special spice in those. The third flavor was poppy seed and, oh, I loved those! You can still buy Solo brand poppy seed filling in a tin can in most U.S. markets. If it's nowhere else, check the Jewish foods section. I doubt if she altered it much. It comes already sweetened.
After the filling was scooped into each crater, a glob of a special creamy topping was put on, leaving the filling showing around the edges. The best way she found to duplicate her mother's topping was by using "hoop" cheese. You rarely see it. It's packaged like the large-sized Philadelphia Cream Cheese used to be, or like a pound of butte, less fatty and not sweet at all like ricotta. The cheese needs to be pretty dry, because you add egg, or maybe just the yolk, I don't remember, sugar, vanilla extract and probably a pinch of salt. This mixture must be made smooth, because the cheese comes a bit lumpy. After all is baked, Mom would glaze on melted butter with one of her mother's hand-tied goose feather brushes.
I haven't had these delights since my mom gave up baking in the 1980's and subsequently died.
Nobody in my family has ever found anything even close to these gems I used to come home from school to Âspread out everywhere to cool on torn-open grocery bags.
They freeze well. You just reheat them and dust them with powdered sugar. Manna from heaven, believe me! If she had dough left over, well that made the world's finest croissants. The secret's in the lightness of the dough. Mom and her sister wrote to each other their whole lives telling of their latest batch and deciding if they stood up to their mother's.
Of course, for us kids, they were always perfection.

Here is a link that might be useful: Michael Storer deluxe hand-crafted perfumes