Cottage Cheese Sochniki with Apples

Name: Cottage Cheese Sochniki with Apples
Ingredients: 200 g flour; 200 g cottage cheese; 100 g butter; 100 g sugar; 1 egg; 1 tsp vanilla sugar; 0.5 tsp baking powder; pinch of salt; 2-3 apples; 1 tbsp lemon juice; cinnamon to taste

Today I have a somewhat unusual but absolutely delicious recipe! Everyone knows that sochniki are pastries made from a folded-over round of dough with an open filling peeking out — and most often that filling is cottage cheese. Here's the recipe for those classic sochniki. By the way, sochniki can also be savory, filled with fish, cheese, or other fillings. Today, though, I made a sweet version with a little twist — I used the cottage cheese in the dough instead of the filling, and made the filling from apples)) The result was just wonderful — soft, tender sochniki with a cottage cheese flavor, complemented by a soft, baked apple! So delicious! I ended up with 15 pieces!

Ingredients:

Dough:
200 g flour
200 g cottage cheese
100 g butter
100 g sugar
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla sugar
0.5 tsp baking powder
pinch of salt
Filling:
2-3 apples
1 tbsp lemon juice
cinnamon to taste

How to cook cottage cheese sochniki with apples

Make the dough. Place the flour, baking powder, sugar, and salt in a food processor and mix briefly. Add the pieces of butter and the cottage cheese broken into chunks.

Pulse in the food processor until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Add a cold egg.

Mix until a dough forms, turn it out onto a floured surface, and shape it into a ball. Refrigerate for 30–60 minutes.

Prepare the filling. Peel the apples and cut each one into 12 wedges, or into 10 wedges if the apples are small. Add the lemon juice and, if needed, a little powdered sugar if your apples are very tart.

Shape the sochniki. Roll the dough out to a thickness of about 3–4 mm. Cut out rounds using a cookie cutter — mine was 9 cm in diameter.

Place an apple wedge on each round. It's best to pat the wedges dry with a paper towel beforehand.

Fold the other half of the dough over the filling. Pinch the corners together like a hand pie, leaving the rest open.

For a few of the sochniki, I sprinkled cinnamon over the apple wedges before folding.

Place the sochniki on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Sprinkle lightly with sugar and press it gently into the surface.

Bake in a preheated 180°C oven for approximately 15–25 minutes, or until done. Let them cool completely — the cottage cheese flavor comes through much more once they're cool, and they taste so much better overall.