I’ve had a wonderful day! My neighbour June was baking some of her traditional Hungarian sweets today, and she let me sit in her kitchen and watch. It was like having a private cooking class, only better, because I got to hear stories about her life and family, which had me completely captivated.
She made two different dishes, her jam kifli (which is completely different to her vanilla kifli – the jam ones are a filled pastry as opposed to a cookie) and a cottage cheese and sour cream cake. The jam kifli are made with a tactile, pliable, smooth-as-silk dough, which June whips together by hand on a large piece of laminate that her darling husband made for her decades ago. Interestingly, there’s no sugar in the dough – the kifli get their sweetness from the filling and the icing sugar mixture that they’re tossed in after they’ve cooled. The pastry is amazingly flaky and light (June’s more so than mine) and it’s way too easy to inhale three in a single breath. Pete looked at me forlornly tonight and said, “Babe, I think I’ve eaten too many baked goods”. I could only groan in agreement…
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The cottage cheese and sour cream cake is completely different – it’s an elegant dinner party dessert, which looks as good as it tastes. June hunts high and low for the European style (“Farm style”) cottage cheese that she uses – unlike the stuff we normally get in little tubs, this comes in a large half kilo block and is quite solid, although it crumbles easily with a fork.
The pastry she uses is very flexible – June uses it for both this cake and apple pies – and I’m sure it would work well for other sweet pies as well.
Fig Jam and Lime Cordial 
so have you tried to bake your own cottage cheese and sour cream cake yet?
Not yet, but I’ve found the cottage cheese!