Real Food for Real Life

Wednesday, January 4, 2012

A Christmas Tradition...

Poppy Seed filled Kolacky

We were away for Christmas this year, so Ben was not able to compete in the annual Kolacky baking contest.  Not wanting us to be without a Christmas Kolacky, his sister sent us one via second day UPS.  Undoubtedly, Becky would have won this year as this was the best one that we had ever had.  I posted a picture of the Kolacky in a Christmas album on Facebook where a friend saw it and wanted the recipe.  Since I was originally going to email it to her, but as I have been so remiss in posting, I decided to share it here.  As it turns out, I had already posted this last Christmas, so the recipe can be found here.  Ben uses Solo Poppy Seed filling and says that he uses about 3/4 can for each roll (and leftover filling is good eaten right from the spoon :)

While I didn't take a photo this year, another traditional (in the sense that we eat it at all holidays) holiday dish from Ben's family is Escalloped Pineapple.  One of my purposes for this blog was to create a recipe collection for my (and anyone else's) future use, but when I looked for the recipe here I found that this must have recipe was not included.  Out came the book of handwritten recipes and cooking commenced.  This recipe, like the Kolacky, is short on detailed instruction...I've played with it over the years, cutting the amounts of butter and sugar and subbing soft wheat bread for the white, cutting off the crust sometimes, keeping it others.  This year I used the whole amounts given for butter and sugar and used the white bread (with crusts).  It was just perfect.

Escalloped Pineapple

4 cups white bread cubes
3 eggs, beaten
3/4 cup sugar
3/4 cup margarine (I use butter)
1 can crushed pineapple (I use the large can)

Mix ingredients and bake 30 minutes at 35o degrees.

I find that I usually use more than 4 cups of bread cubes; I use stale bread and keeping cubing and mixing in until the mixture is not too soupy.  To get it nice and golden brown with crisp edges (my favorite part), I find that the baking time is usually closer to 40-45 minutes in a 9" x 13" glass baking dish.

1 comment:

  1. I never knew the correct name for this! I've seen it, eaten it, loved it, but it was nameless before to me. And although I've also had similar pineapple dishes, never won with bread. I think I'd like that better -- less sweet. Nice collection of traditions!

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