Looking for delicious Christmas recipes? You may like these A-mazing dumplings (Ukrainian varenyky) stuffed with poppy seeds and served with sour cream/honey.
Varenyky are one of the 12 sacred dishes of the traditional Ukrainian Christmas dinner and poppy seeds symbolize wealth and prosperity for the coming year. So it would be a wonderful idea to include them in your festive menu.
The dumplings we’re going to cook today have tender wheat-based dough wrapping a luscious filling made of soft poppy seeds and raisins sweetened with sugar. This tastes insanely good. Really worth a try)
Ingredients:
Dough
- 50 g (2 oz) dairy butter
- 400 g (14 oz) wheat flour
- 2 eggs
- 250 ml milk
- a pinch of salt
Filling
- 4 tbsp raisins
- 3 tbsp sugar
- 150 g (5 oz) poppy seeds
Cooking
Dough
To prepare dumplings with poppy seeds, start mixing together milk, butter, and salt.
Bring the mass to boil and turn off the fire.
Stir in 160 g (5,5 oz) of flour. Next, add in eggs, one by one. Stir in the remaining flour gradually. At first, knead the dough with a spoon. Then continue to knead it with your hands. At the end, you should get soft elastic dough that is not sticking to your hands.
Cover the dough with linen cloth and let it rest for 30 minutes before starting to shape dumplings (a napkin will also prevent dumplings from drying).
Filling
Put poppy seeds in a bowl and pour boiling water above for half an hour. Drain excess water and run poppy seeds through a grinder 3 times or grind them with a pestle.
Wash raisins and separately soak them in boiling water for 20 minutes. Drain water and leave raisins to dry.
Mix raisins, poppy seeds, and sugar until well combined.
Let’s shape dumplings
Roll out thin layer of dough (2 mm) on a lightly floured surface. Cut out circles using a drinking glass or cookie cutter.
Gather scraps and return them to the bowl with dough, use the scraps with the next portion of the dough. Put 1 tbsp of the filling in the center of a circle. Fold the circle in half and tightly press the edges. Repeat until all dough and filling are used up.
To boil varenyky, bring a big pan of water to boil, salt it slightly and add varenyky in portions (10-15 dumplings at a time). Stir dumplings to prevent sticking. Cook varenyky until they float to the top, for 5-7 minutes. Transfer dumplings to a deep bowl with a slotted spoon. Add melted dairy butter or oil so that varenyky don’t stick to each other.
Serve dumplings warm and garnished with sour cream or honey.
In case you want to freeze some dumplings for later use, put them on a baking sheet in a single layer and leave in a freezer for a night. Then transfer frozen varenyky to a ziplock bag. By the way, when you decide to boil dumplings, you don’t have to thaw them out beforehand. Just take out of the freezer and boil)
Have you liked the recipe for Christmas varenyky with poppy seed filling?
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