This meant that I would have the chance to help her out with this batch! Up early, we set to work so that the dough would have plenty of time to do its rising. Since Mom has done this more than a couple times now, I let her take the lead, but stepped in where I could. Here are some action shots of me kneading the dough before we set it up to rise. (She reminded me that I'd want some fun photos for the blog - thank goodnesss! - but I did instruct her not to get my 7am face or hair in the pictures...yikes)
If you remember in Mom's guest post she talked about the importance of all the rising the dough has to do in order to make a good kolace. We set it to rise once as a big ball (which is supposed to double in size) and then again after the dough is divided into little balls. I laughed that we were kind of the blind leading the blind when Mom pulled off the electic blanket and tubberware lid (part of her highly technical design to encourage our dough to do its rising) and asked 'do you think thats double?' and responded with, 'I don't know? Do you think its doubled?'
Regardless of our kolace making experience, our two heads were better than one because, together, we figured out a few tricks of the trade along the way this time! One was the process for dividing the dough. I have a distinct childhood memory of my Grandma taking a handful of dough and placing it, palm up, in her left hand. Then she would squeeze each finger, starting with her pinky and moving upward until her pointer and thumb pinched a perfectly round and smooth piece of dough from the blob in her hand. As a little girl I tried to repeat this easy and natural movement with mixed results. Mostly I ended up with more dough between my fingers and falling out the bottom of my hand than pinched between my pointer and thumb. But on Saturday, armed with my memory and a larger hand, I picked up a piece of dough and pinched out a round ball as easily as if I'd been doing it all my life. Voila! Unfortunately, it was a rather large round ball. Since it still had to rise (again to double in size) Mom showed me a better size to aim for (two heads!). She also picked up the technique (she had tried before, but with not enough dough in hand, making it much harder) and together we quickly pinched out 3 baking sheets of kolace balls.
After they had risen what we eyeballed to be about double in size, we started to fill them with the cheese and cherry fillings. Enter trick of the trade #2. Again, I remembered Grandma spending some time mashing each puffy ball in the center to create a little 'boat' for the filling. While Mom had been mashing, she was nervous about flatting the dough to pieces (especially after all the hard work getting it to rise!) and therefore made more conservative boats. I on the other hand, seemed to error on the opposite side and began dutifully mashing away. We both tried our techniques on our half of a cookie sheet and watched them bake to see how it went. Again, two heads proved to be better - we agreed that a technique somewhere in the middle seemed to be the way to go; not too mashed, but a decent boat to hold some of the good filling!
And here they are!
The family was super pleased to try our latest endeavor and agreed that 'day of' really makes a delicious difference :) It was super fun getting to make them with Mom. And made me excited to share them with our guests at the wedding. I think food favors are a great way to go. They tend to be less expensive and, I think, more practical than some other wedding favors. And growing up, I learned that making food for someone was a way to show your love. Its certainly something I held on to and practice today. So with the 'thanks for coming to celebrate our day with us' I hope each guest feels in their Kolace, I also hope they taste the love we're sending with them on their way.
