Czech Christmas Cookies - Rohlíčky

ROHLÍČKY

Rohlíčky means tiny rolls and that's what they are. Everybody here seems to have their own recipe and the cooking magazines are filled with sightly different recipes. This is a modification of my grandma's recipe and it makes about 6 - 7 sheets of cookies, a LOT of rolling. You can cut the recipe in half if you want less. They are my favorite (to eat)!

Again, you want to make the dough up front a day or two. They are tasty right when you make them, especially when still hot, but even better when sitting in a cold place for couple weeks.

Ingredience:

4 cups all purpose flour (i mixed 2 and 2 cups od wholewheat and all purp. this time)
0.55 lb powdered sugar
0.3 lb walnuts chopped in food processor to the cou-cous size
0.2 lb peeled almonds chopped the same way (or you can use all walnuts)
2 egg yolks (I used 4 because I used wholewheat flour)
3 sticks butter at room temperature (I used 3,5)
1 teaspoon of vanilla extract

To make the dough:

Whisk together the flours, sugar, walnuts, almonds in bigger bowl. Make a hole in the middle and add yolks. Stir them with the fork to partly mix it with some of the flour and then add butter cut in small pieces. Work with your hand to knead the dough. It is a LOT of dough, you will be quite tired. No matter what you will end up with a nice dough that you should wrap in plastic foil or plastic bag you get at the grocery store and put it to teh bottom of the fridge for 1 or 2 days, up to a week.

To make cookies:

Rohlíčky are quite elaborate. I tend to make one sheet at the time and come back to it later because it is quite time consuming and if you try to do it all at once you need a whole afternoon or a lot of friends to help, which is also fun.

Preheat the oven to 300F, on the middle position rack. Prepare 1 or 2 baking sheets and line them with baking paper. Cut off about 1 inch of your dough and put the rest to the fridge. It is important to work with cold dough because warm dough just doesn't stick together. Even the cold dough will be quite tricky. Take out small piece of dough to form a ball about 3/4 inch in diameter. When forming a ball, the trick is to work only with the center of your palms, don't use your fingers. When you have a ball, rub your palms together to create 1/2 diameter roll, about 2,5 inch long. Place it on the cookie sheet and bend it to the rohlíček shape.


When you are done with the sheet (one takes me about 20 min to roll), put it in the oven and bake about 5 - 10 mins. The rohlíčky should be still light and slightly pink. They are also edible when a little bit darker but they can give you heartburn.



Coat them immediately in the powdered sugar and store in a box in a cold place, the longer the better.