Delicate shortbread that melts in your mouth and sweet, juicy tvorog filling – sochniki are a taste experience in themselves. Whether with tea, coffee, for breakfast or as a snack between meals – the popular Russian curd bags are irresistibly delicious. Moreover, they are easy and quick to bake according to this recipe.
Add eggs, sour cream, vanilla and salt and mix thoroughly.
Mix flour and baking powder, add it in batches to the sour cream-egg-butter-sugar mixture and knead it into a soft dough. (Be sure to follow the tips and tricks at the top of the post for this). Put the dough in the refrigerator for 20 minutes.
Preparation of the filling
Put tvorog in a mixing bowl, add egg whites and sugar and mash it with a fork.
Shaping and baking the sochniki
Dust the work surface with flour, roll out the dough to a thickness of about 0.4 cm and cut out circles of about Ø 10 cm with a cookie cutter.
First take a circle of dough and pull it very slightly lengthwise to form an oval. Place about 1 heaped teaspoon of tvorog filling (the amount depends on the size of your circles) on one half of the oval and place the second half on top. Immediately place the shaped sotschnik on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Repeat the same with all the dough circles.
Mix egg yolk with water and brush the curd bags with it.
Bake the sochniki in a preheated oven at 180 °C for about 30 minutes. Let them cool down and dust them with powdered sugar if necessary.
Notes
To give the dough the right consistency, add flour little by little. The dough should be very soft and elastic. It should not be mushy, very sticky or too firm.
Do not knead the dough for too long.
Adjust the amount of sugar for the dough and for the filling according to taste.
For the filling it is best to use Russian tvorog.
Mash the tvorog with a fork and do not use a hand blender for this. Otherwise, the tvorog mixture could become too liquid.
Prepare the filling right before proceeding and do not let it stand for a long time, otherwise it could become liquid.
Do not bake sochniki too long so that they taste juicy. After baking, they should have a light golden brown color. Do a chopstick test to check if the dough is done baking.
Note the detailed tips and tricks for baking sochniki at the top of the post.