Recipes from the Hradecko Region

Hradecké koláčky (Cakes from Hradec Králové)

Festive cakes with various fillings

60 dkg plain flour, 1 butter, 1 cube of yeast, 1/8 vegetable fat, 4 spoonfuls of oil, 3 egg yolks, 1 vanilla sugar, 14 spoonfuls of milk, 1 baking powder, rum for coating, 1 spoonful of sugar

Filling: poppy seeds with cloves, star anise and cinnamon, plum, peach, apple, apricot and nut /35 dkg of ground nuts, 2 shredded apple, cinnamon and star anise/

Divide the flour in half and a kneed dough from one of the halves with the fat. Add the yeast / 4 spoonfuls of warm milk, a spoonful of sugar, and yeast to the second half of the flour and kneed into dough together with 10 spoonfuls of milk. Then combine the dough together, kneed and form into buns making a depression for the filling with a glass. Finally, sprinkle with icing sugar, plain flour, butter, vanilla sugar, lemon and orange peel.

After baking dip the bottom of the cakes in rum while still hot and cover in sugar.

Postní královéhradecký kucmoch (Hradec Králové Lenten “kucmoch”)

Folk fasting vegetarian meal

1 kg potatoes, coarse flour, butter, sugar and poppy seeds or dried ground pear

Boil a pan of salted peeled potatoes and pour out 2/3 of the water. Make holes with a spoon, sprinkle everything with a layer of whole meal flour and mash again. Put the covered pan aside for 10 minutes. Then mix everything, add a spoon of butter and make into pieces on a plate, pour over with butter and sprinkle with poppy seeds, sugar or dried ground pear.

Cukrovinky z mišpulí (Medlar sweets)

Sweets from less-well-known but popular yellowish-brown fruits, which are not harvested until after the first frost and are very sweet and suitable for use in jams or squashes.

350 g medlar puree, 182 g sugar, the juice of 1 lemon, icing sugar, tin foil moulds

Wash and boil the medlar, cut off the sepals and strain through a sieve. Add 182 g sugar to 1 kg of the puree and boil until it gets thick. When it begins to harden add the juice and peal of 1 lemon. Pour out 2 cm layer into tinfoil which is cut into 2x2 cm pieces after hardening, cover in icing sugar and dry on a breadboard for about 1 month.

Toč z Máslojed (“Toč” from Máslojedy)

A traditional folk delicacy

Potatoes, milk to prepare the dough, coarse flour, caraway seed, salt and pepper to season, butter to grease the baking tin, sauerkraut as a side dish

Peel and roughly shred a large raw potato. Add several boiled potatoes, whole meal flour, a bit of milk and make soggy dough. Season with caraway seeds, salt and pepper. Pour out the dough into a greased baking tray and bake in a hot oven until it browns. The meal is best served with a side dish of sauerkraut.

Real Pumprnikl with tea

Another Hradec tradition was making gingerbread and one of those real Pumpernickels to go with your tea must have been a superb delicacy. Judge yourself:

1/2 kg sugar, 600 g wheat flour, 3 eggs, 1/2 spoon of crushed ginger, 25 g candied lemon rind, 6 g crushed cloves, 30 g ground cinnamon, 125 g ground almonds, 15 g baking powder, chocolate icing

Melt sugar and cook it until it gets light brown colour. When it cools down, add wheat flower and leave it rest for half a day. Afterwards add eggs, ginger, lemon rind, cloves and cinnamon, almonds and baking powder. Place the dough on the baking tin and bake at high temperature. As soon as you take the tin out of the oven, cut for 3 cm stripes and glair with chocolate glaze.

Hradec Králové Region