Vatrushka

Her ladyship was reduced to the pitiable choice of yesterday’s croissants or one of the nine different kinds of rolls, milk breads, sweet breads, scones, pancakes, vatrushki, kalachi, ponchiki, rogaliki and bulochki whose delicious, new-baked smell was wafting all over the house.

Bake about 25 minutes or until lightly browned and cooked. Cool on a rack. Yield: About four dozen vatrushki

Bake for 15–20 minutes, or until the vatrushki are golden.

But at night when they came to see me in the Ural, when they had knocked back huge amounts of Kunzevskaya and Stolichnaya and devoured piles of piroshki, oladyi, vatrushki, and bulochki with zimmes, they spoke French, English, kissed hands and paid compliments, knew the wittiest toasts, and fiddled their Russian souls inside out in order to dance on the most crooked roofs of the most Eastern shtetl at dawn.

“You look wonderful,” he said, unable to hold his tongue. / “So do you,” she replied with an amused smile, “but I think you raided the fat end of Vasily’s wardrobe. He has a thin end which he uses when he’s off the vatrushki and vodka.”

Typically, vatrushki are made from a yeasted wheat flour dough enriched with butter, eggs, and sugar rather like brioche, shaped into a flattened round that is pinched up and then filled with tvorog—a kind of farmer’s curd cheese similar to German quark or Italian ricotta.