Kolaches

Before Samwise returned to London on Sunday, I thought I'd try my hand at baking some sweet kolaches.  While living in NYC, I turned out many successful batches of my savory recipe, filling the kolaches with sausage, ham, cheese, jalapenos, &c.  However, I had yet to attempt the more traditional, Czech-style sweet bun, which is famously had in West, TX, on the drive to Dallas from San Antonio & Austin, here:

Suspecting my savoury kolache recipe wouldn't quite work with a sweet filling, I scrambled for a reliable alternative.  After about five minutes of wading through garbage online, I decided to try Homesick Texan, a cooking blog I started reading while living in Brooklyn.  The author, Lisa Fain, is a Texan living in the New York City, & she writes about preparing classic Texas dishes in her pint-sized, urban kitchen.  Her writing's un-pretentious & she posts great pictures; it's more or less everything I want from a food blog.  I've had a little success with Lisa's recipes in the past, so this past Sunday morning, I figured I'd try her suggestion for sweet kolaches.  They turned out really, really well.  See for yourself:

I can't recall if these look anything like those available in West, but they tasted delicious!  The dough was yeasty & sweet, & Lisa's recommendations for apricot & prune toppings made for extremely tasty kolaches.  I ate half a dozen myself.  It was a good day.