I saw a picture of these on Instagram in the last couple of days and it reminded me that my mom used to make these sweet buns filled with a delicious tart plum butter filling. It’s been years since I’ve had them and I don’t think I’ve made them ever. I moved out of my parent’s home about 35 years ago and so, though it may not be, it sure does feel as though it’s been at least that long since I’ve had them. Clearly it’s time they made their way to these pages and of course my kitchen.

These days we don’t go out much, damn Covid, really at all, except on the weekends when we take the dog, drive a half hour to spend some time at a property that our daughter and son-in-law bought in the spring. It’s literally 90 some acres of sandy hilled property filled with trails and a lovely pond, which is frozen right now. The dogs love it there and we can hike the trails without having to worry about where the dogs are, are there any people around and are the pooches going to run off. If the crazy puppies scare someone that’s fine, no one else should be wandering there.

This also gives me the opportunity to make something like this because you can’t really make just four of these and it wouldn’t be good to eat sixteen of them, much better to make sure you can share with a few people. Drop some off at a neighbour’s or two? I’m making two pans, one with a small number of buns that I’m baking in the evening for us to enjoy and another whole pan that sits ready in the fridge to be baked first thing in the morning. Nothing like fresh sweet buns.

When I asked my mom for the recipe she literally sent me three Czech video links found here, here and here. And then she called me and said, ” a good little trick is to grate a cooked potato into the dough. That helps keep them soft longer.” No measurements, no instructions, no clear plan, just a few places for inspiration. I watched parts of a couple of the videos and put a couple potatoes on to boil. You’ll see if you watch the videos that I didn’t follow any one of them specifically and if you can’t understand Czech, don’t worry, just follow the recipe below.

Proper Czech Sweet Buns with Plum Butter Filling

• 500 grams flour
• 20 grams fresh yeast (or 2 teaspoons dry active yeast)
• 250 ml milk
• 60 grams butter melted
• 120 grams sugar
• 1 whole egg and 1 yolk
• 1 cooked potato (preferable boiled whole and let cool)
• Pinch of salt
• 1 Cup Plum Butter
  • 1 teaspoon cinnamon and 1/2 teaspoon cloves and sugar to taste
• 2 tablespoons butter (melted) for the topping prior to baking

Warm up milk so that it’s hot to the touch, add a spoon of the sugar, mix and add yeast, let it bloom undisturbed for 5 – 10 minutes

Put flour, rest of sugar, grated potato and salt into electric mixer. Once the yeast has bloomed add to the flour along with the eggs and melted butter. Mix until a nice soft dough forms.

Knead with your hands adding just enough flour to make a nice ball then place bake into bowl dusting the dough with a little flour and covering with a clean tea towel. Set somewhere warm for 1 – 1 1/2 hours to rise.

Get your filling ready by mixing the plum butter with some cinnamon and cloves and a bit of sugar to taste so that it is still tart but delicious. Set aside.

Once the dough has doubled in size roll it out and cut into 16 sections. Place a good tablespoon of plum butter into each section and pinch the dough so that the plum butter is in the middle and it is closed from each side. Roll into a nice ball and place into the pan. You can place these pretty close to each other. Once all are in the pan brush each one liberally with melted butter.

Bake at 350 degrees for about 30 minutes or until nicely golden brown.

Toppings

• 2 – 3 tablespoons butter
• 1 tablespoon rum
• 2-3 tablespoons icing sugar

Melt butter and add rum, then brush freshly baked buns with the mixture. After they have cooled a bit dust them with icing sugar then devour with glee. I dare you to eat just one…. OMG…. Sorry… I know it’s probably not the best thing to be eating while quarantining but now would be a good time (before you’ve eaten them all) to set some aside to share with a neighbour.