Fruit dumplings are something every Czech kid knows. They are served as main course even in the school cafeterias. There are many ways to prepare them, so let us show you at least some of them.
Before we start with the fruit dumplings, there’s another special type of fruit dumplings with povidla and poppy seed – check it out here.
Table of Contents
Fruit Dumplings
You can prepare the fruit dumplings or ovocné knedlíky with literally anything you like. There are three parts to every good Czech fruit dumpling:
- fruit
- dough
- topping
You can use any fruit you can get your hands on although Czech dumplings are typically prepared with strawberries, plums, apricots or blueberries. Instead of fresh fruit you can use canned fruit or marmalades.
As for the dough, you can make yeast dumplings or dumplings from quark cheese dough.
The usual toppings would be quark cheese, powder sugar, nuts, poppy seed, hot butter and even fried breadcrumbs.
Recipes
Yeast Dough Fruit Dumplings / Kynuté ovocné knedlíky
Supplies:
- 400 g/14,1 oz of flour, ideally semi coarse flour – refer to our Czech Flour Guide
- 200 ml/6,8 oz of lukewarm milk
- 1 block of yeast (42 g/1,5 oz)
- 3 tbsp of powder sugar
- 1 egg
- pinch of salt
- fruit
How to make them:
Break the yeast in small pieces and put it in a bowl. Add half the milk and one tablespoon of sugar. Mix a little and let it rest for 15 minutes or until you see that the yeast has started working.
Then put the flour in a large bowl, add the rest of the sugar and salt. Then add the yeast mixture and the egg and mix everything. You can knead with your hands until the the dough is smooth. Cover the bowl with a cloth and let it rise until it doubles its volume.
Take a piece of the dough, just as much as fits on a tablespoon. Stretch it a little to make a small pancake and place some fruit in the middle. Close the dumpling with the fruit inside, form a ball and place it on the table closing side down. Let the dumplings rest for another 5 minutes and meanwhile put a large pot of water to boil.
Put the dumplings in boiling water. The boiling time depends on their size but generally it´s 10 minutes with a lid on or 6 minutes without a lid, then turn the dumplings and give them another 6 minutes. Take them out of the water and serve hot with one of the toppings below.
Other ways of cooking the dumplings would be steaming them in a strainer or in a clean cloth.
Quark Cheese Dumplings / Tvarohové knedlíky
The main ingredient of these dumplings it tvaroh which is quark cheese. You can use also cottage cheese.
Supplies:
- 250 g / 8,8 oz of cheese
- 1 egg
- 240 g / 8,5 oz of semi coarse flour – refer to our Czech Flour Guide
- pinch of salt
- fruit
How to make them:
Put all the ingredients except the fruit in a bowl and make a smooth dough. With a tablespoon scoop pieces of the dough and form small pancakes with your hands.
Pack some fruit in each pancake.
Place the dumplings in boiling water. They will sink at first but after a while they’ll start floating. Boil them another 5 minutes and then take them out. Serve hot with one of the toppings below.
Toppings
The typical toppings are:
- quark cheese with powder sugar on top and poured hot butter
- fried breadcrumbs and hot butter
- poppy seed with powder sugar and hot butter
- ground walnuts and hot butter
Cheese Dumplings with Fruit Sauce
We have a separate article on how to prepare the fruit dumplings in this easier way and you can find it right here.
Did you enjoy this sweet dumpling treat? Don’t forget to browse our Recipes category.
