Baked Cherry Piroshki #CookForUkraine

My Ukrainian Babushka’s recipe for sweet baked piroshki is so comforting and will make the kitchen smell so cosy like a home bakery! Piroshki are hand pies that can be made with sweet or savoury fillings – baked or fried. This is a recipe for baked sweet piroshki.

 In my family we would use a variety of fillings - depending on the availability around the time of the year. I love these with cherries, sour cherries, blueberries, stewed apples with cinnamon and also stewed plums! All fillings are delicious – you can remove the corn flour if you’re using something other than the cherries or blueberries. Traditionally a much larger batch is made. Double the size of this. Feel free to do that if you’d like to share with your friends and neighbours.

 Prep time: 20 minutes + 1 hour proving time

Cook time: 30 minutes

Makes: Approximately 10-12 piroshki

Ingredients

 Dough

• 250ml milk
• 7g dry yeast
• 3 tbsp sugar
• 75g butter
• 500g plain flour + extra
• 2 eggs
• pinch of salt

 Filling

• 1kg Frozen pitted cherries
• 1/2 cup sugar
• pinch of salt
• 3 tbsp corn flour

Method

1. Place the milk and 1 tbsp of the sugar into a small pot. Warm the milk until it’s lukewarm. Add in the yeast and stir through. Set aside in a warm space for 10-15 minutes to let the yeast activate and become frothy.
2. Meanwhile melt the butter in another separate pot then set aside to slightly cool. Whisk in 1 of the eggs (keep the other egg for the egg wash).
3. In a large bowl, add in the flour, the salt and the other 2 spoons of sugar. Whisk together. Pour in the butter and egg mixture along with the activated yeast mixture. Mix altogether and combine into a roughly mixed dough. Transfer the dough onto a lightly floured surface and knead for 5 minutes. Place the dough into a lightly oiled bowl and cover with a kitchen towel and let the dough rise for 1 hour or until doubled in size.
4. Meanwhile make the cherry filling. Place the frozen cherries into a pot and add the sugar and pinch of salt. Bring to a boil, dissolve the sugar and reduce to a medium heat so that it’s lightly simmering. Cook stirring the cherries occasionally for approximately 10 minutes. Add in the corn flour and stir through well so that there are no clumps and cook for another 10 minutes (the mixture should become sticky quite quickly). Remove from the heat and transfer the cherry filling into a bowl to cool down.
5. Once the dough has risen, preheat the oven to 180 degrees and prepare two trays with baking paper. Make the egg wash by whisking the egg in a small bowl until smooth.
6. Lightly flour the kitchen surface. Place the dough on to the surface and divide into 2 pieces. At this point you can either divide the dough into roughly equal sized pieces or weigh them out for extra accuracy. Divide each piece of dough to weigh approximately 60-65g.
7. Lightly flour the surface again and roll out each piece of dough into the shape of an oval, fill with 2 tbsp of the cherry filling (try to reduce the amount of liquid that goes in).
8. Seal the edges of the piroshki together and press/pinch the edges together firmly so that there is less leakage from the filling when they bake. Adjust the amount of flour you need on the surface, adding as much or as little as you roll out the piroshki.
9. Transfer the piroshki onto the baking tray with the sealed edge on the base of the tray. Keep a 2 cm distance between each one. Once you’ve fill up a tray, brush with some egg wash and place into the oven to bake for approximately 20 minutes or until the surfaces look golden brown. Cook 1 tray at a time. Once piroshki are ready, remove from the oven and set aside to cool. Note piroshki with cherry fillings can leak so just let them cool on the tray then remove the excess sticky filling before transferring onto a plate.

Cooking Notes:

• Place the leftover cherry filling into a container and into the fridge. Use served over ice cream or with cake.
• Adjust the exact baking time in the oven to suit your oven
• To avoid leakage pinch as firmly as possible the edges together.

Enjoy!

Recipe by Anastasia Zolotarev. Click here to see her blog.