Krhki flancati

Krhki flancati - strawbe

My country has quite a few popular desserts that are served on special occasions, and one of them is called krhki flancati, or strawbe, depending on the part of the country you are in. I have not seen anything similar in the United States of America, and I am not sure if there is an English translation for that, but you might recognize what I am talking about, from this picture:

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Krhki flancati (or strawbe) are especially popular in my country during winter months, and this is the recipe I have always used to make them.

Ingredients

This amount of ingredients will make about thirty krhki flancati, and the whole process from start to finish will take approximately one hour and a half.

• 300 grams of all purpose flour
• Four egg yolks
• 50 grams of butter
• Four tablespoons of sour cream
• One tablespoon of white sugar
• One pinch of salt
• One tablespoon of rum
• Lemon juice
• Canola oil for frying
• Powdered sugar (optional)

Preparation

Take a big bowl and put flour in it first. Make a hole in the middle. Then, add butter (just cut it up into small pieces, you do not need to melt it), egg yolks, sugar, sour cream, rum and a few drops of lemon juice into the hole. Mix the ingredients together with your hands until the dough is smooth and not sticky. Cover the bowl with a clean towel and let the dough rest for thirty minutes or so.

After the thirty minutes, flour the clean surface and roll out the dough. The thinner it is, the better - I usually try to make it half a centimeter thin, or even less. This is the most frustrating part of the krhki flancati preparation, because the dough will keep shrinking back to the original size at the beginning.

Once the dough is all rolled out, cut it into rectangles, sized approximately 4x7 centimeters. In the middle of each rectangle, cut two stripes diagonally. See an example on the picture below.

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Then, push the ends of the rectangles through these two stripes. The final result before frying the krhki flancati should look somehow like this:

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Then, heat up the cooking oil. Fry the krhki flancati for approximately five minutes - they should be golden brown at the end. Once you take them out of the oil, put them on some paper towels so the excess oil can drain, and let them cool down completely.

And just an advice for the dough preparation: if you feel like the dough is too hard (too stiff), add some more sour cream. Do not add too much though, because otherwise the dough will stick to the rolling pin.

Storage and serving suggestions

The most common way to serve krhki flancati is sprinkling them with powdered sugar, but they taste good plain as well. If you cannot decide which way you like them better, sprinkle half of them with powdered sugar, and leave half of them plain. Problem solved.

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Yummy!

Surprisingly, krhki flancati actually taste the best a few days after making them. Do not get me wrong, they are delicious on the first day as well, it is just that after a few days, they are somehow more chewy and flavourful. The best way to keep krhki flancati fresh for up to two weeks, is storing them in a plastic Tupperware container.

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