Hungarian cuisine is rich in filling soups so it's a common thing that women bake some kind of sweet dough instead of preparing a normal main course. Curd Cheese Bags -túrós batyu or túrós táska in Hungraian-, are quite popular after goulash or bean soup for example.
They are quite nice on the day after you bake them as well, so if you go for a hike or sightseeing, it could be quite handy to have some of them in your backpack. I like to add fresh berries to my baked goods during summertime and I'm obsessed with the colours and taste of baked blueberries, so I've chosen them for additional visual and culinary pleasures.
Ingredients
Dough
- 500 g flour
- 150 ml milk, hand warm
- 1 egg
- 1 pinch salt
- 25 g fresh yeast
- 80 g butter, melted
- 2 tbsp sugar
Filling
- 450 g cow's curd cheese
- 2 tbsp crème fraîche
- 2 tbsp semolina
- 5 tbsp sugar
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 1 lemon, zest
- 2 eggs
- 1 handful raisins (optional)
- 1 handful of fresh blueberries (optional)
- 1 egg - for eggwash
Instructions
Filling
- Put the curd cheese, crème fraîche, sugar, semolina, vanilla extract, lemon zest and egg yolks into a mixing bowl and mix them with a hand mixer.
- In a separate bowl, whip the egg whites till you get a firm foam.
- Gently fold the egg white foam into the curd cheese mixture, incorporate the raisins if you like.
- Place the filling into the fridge.
Dough
- First of all, put the flour in a mixing bowl, create a little hollow in the middle.
- Pour the milk in the middle, add the yeast, sugar and a little flour from the sides and let it rest for a few minutes till the yeast starts to be active.
- Add the egg, salt and melted butter then mix the dough with the dough hooks of your hand mixer. The dough should be flexible, a bit sticky -so if you need to change the consistency just add a little flour OR milk. Let it rest for an hour, it will double in size.
- After it has risen, let's put the dough on a floured surface and roll it to get a 0,5 cm thick, rectangular dough. Cut it into 10x10 cm squares.
- Add about 1 tbsp curd cheese filling to each dough square, spread a little bit and if you fancy add the fresh blueberries at this point. Make sure you do not overfill the bags because both the dough and filling will expand in the oven.
- Pinch the 4 corners of the dough square and twist to seal.
- Place the filled bags on a baking tray on parchment paper and let them rise for 20 minutes.
- Finally, give the bags an egg wash.
- Bake them in the preheated oven, at 180 °C for about 15 minutes.
- Let them cool down on a cooling rack and sprinkle icing sugar on top before serving.
Curd Cheese Bag - Photo by © Reka Csulak
