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• No sugar in the dough. That is what makes it taste like pastry rather than a biscuit, and it is also why the dough will not brown much — pull them when the corners are just tan.
• Cream cheese and butter in equal weight to the flour. A very rich, very short dough that must be chilled hard and rolled cold.
• Roll on powdered sugar, not flour. Flour makes them dry; powdered sugar gives a faint glaze and keeps the fold from cracking.
• Seal the fold with egg white or a pinch of water. Two corners folded to the middle, pressed hard. Unsealed, they open in the oven every time.
• Thick filling only. Traditional powidła plum butter, apricot lekvar, or a cooked-down poppy seed paste. Jam runs.

Makes about 40.

• 225 g unsalted butter, cold and cubed
• 225 g full-fat cream cheese, cold
• 280 g all-purpose flour
• 4 g fine salt
• 1 egg yolk
• 300 g thick fruit butter — apricot, prune, or raspberry
• powdered sugar, for rolling and dusting

Cut the butter and cream cheese into the flour and salt until it clumps, add the yolk, and bring together without kneading. Divide in two, flatten into discs, wrap, and chill at least three hours.

Dust the bench heavily with powdered sugar. Roll one disc to 3 mm and cut 6 cm squares.

Put a scant teaspoon of filling on the diagonal of each square. Fold one corner over the filling, dab it, fold the opposite corner across, and press firmly.

Chill the shaped cookies 20 minutes, then bake 190 °C / 375 °F for 12–14 minutes, until the corners are just gold.

Cool, then dust heavily with powdered sugar.

• They open because they were warm, not because the fold was wrong. The 20-minute chill before baking is the fix.
• Prune (powidła) is the oldest filling and the best of them; apricot is the most common in American Polish bakeries.
• Keeps four days, or freeze unbaked and add three minutes.

Method and theory: Cookie recipes · cookies · pastry

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