Czech traditional cuisine - Strawberry dumplings

Czech cuisine is often overlooked by a lot of people. But it too has amazing recipes for nearly any occasion. Today we are going to look at one of the Czech most favorite meals - Strawberry dumplings.

For four portions you will need:

• 500 g of Wondra flour (only this type of flour will work)
• 20 g of yeast
• 1 table spoon of sugar
• 250 ml of warm milk
• 1 egg
• salt
• 300 g of strawberries

1. Sift the flour into a bowl and make a dent in it. Crumble the yeast into the dent, add sugar and half of the milk. Put the bowl into a warm space where will let the mixture rise, this should take 10 – 15 minutes. Add the rest of the milk, egg and a pinch of salt and work the mixture in a tougher dough. Let it rest and rise again for about an hour in a warm place.

2. Take the dough and roll it out – your aiming for about 1cm of height of the dough. Cut square shaped pieces from the dough – each sized roughly 8 x 8 cm. Put one strawberry on to each piece and form the dough into a ball shape with the strawberry at its core. Take a large pot and fill it with slightly salted water and get to boil.

3. Put the dumplings into boiling water. They should be cooked for about 8 minutes, but you will see they are ready once they start to float on the water. Once cooked, puncture them with a fork so the steam comes out and they stay nice and fluffy.

Many Czech children's absolute favorite food, often made by grandmothers in the summer time, this is an absolute classic of the Czech cuisine. Best server with sprinkled sugar or cocoa on top of it and poured over with a bit of melted mutter. Man I love this food. What I do to take this recipe up a notch is that I make this strawberry, cottage cheese and lots of sugar mixture that serves a sauce for these dumplings.

Also, most types of fruits can easily substitute the strawberries. The most popular variants in Czech republic are – blueberries, apples, pears, plums and apricots.