How do you make/spell these Polish(?) cookies?

Years ago (years and years and years and years ago), my great-grandmother made these fantastic sour cream cookies. They were roundish (not cookie balls, but possibly hand-rolled rounds put on a cookie sheet), I think they had a cinnamon sugar egg wash, and possibly had nuts incorporated in them.

She arrived via Poland and Belgium (Europe was a bit tumultuous in the 1920s), so while I’m pretty sure they were Polish, I can’t be sure. Oh, and throw in a bunch of Yiddish background too.

The best hint I have to what they are/were was their name. But I have no idea how to spell it, haven’t had any luck with Google et al, and don’t even know if this is a common name or a family name. Phonetically, they were po-gotch-keys. That’s “po” as in Edger Alan, “gotch” as in the first part of gotcha-ya, and “keys” as in a few Francis Scott clones.

Vague, huh? Sorry.

Just asked my Polish mum: sorry no luck =(

To me, it sounds like a Polish corruption of the Hungarian (or Turkish) pogácsa. Wikipedia link. What you have transliterated there sounds to me like “little pogacsa” in Polish.

edit: I should add, pogácsa are typically savory. I’ve never seen a sweet one.

I found a recipe here (the very last post) for a sweet(er) version of pogácsa.

One more thing. Is it possible what you’re describing is rugelach? Given the description, it sounds possible.

Anyhow, what you have there would be written as pogaczki in Polish. You could also search under pogacza. The former would be the diminutive plural form of the latter.

I did a little more research and found that in Czech or Slovak, you could look for pagáčky or pagáč. The dish continues going south under similar sounding names through at least Turkey (I find it in Hungary, Bulgaria, and Turkey, and I find a few Macedonian references to it, as well.) The only relevant references to pogaczki I could find on the internet refer to Hungarian pogacsa (wegierskie pogaczki), which are savory. The Czech pagáčky also all seem to be savory. At least I couldn’t find any recipes online with cinnamon or much sweetness to them.

So, I have a number of ideas of what could be the case: 1) There’s a sweet version of pogacsa that exists, but is not terribly popular or well-documented on the internet. 2) The name was borrowed by your family from the savory pogacsa and applied to a similar-looking, but sweet dessert. 3) There’s a similar sounding dish to pogaczki, and I’m just digging up a false cognate tree. I can’t think of anything else in Polish that would fit, though. Pączki is kinda close, but minus a syllable. It is sweet, but it’s also a jelly donut, so it doesn’t fit your description.

My grandma makes Kolace. They’re generally filled (my favorite is ground walnut filling, yum yum!) but the dough is definitely cream cheese based. I could see just making the dough and baking them that way.

Yeah, kolaczki are probably the most typical (or at least well-known) Polish cookie (or Czech, Slovak, etc. At any rate, it’s from that part of the world.) I didn’t think to mention them because it sounded different (OP mentioned sour cream in the dough, kolaczki dough sometimes has cream cheese, but I don’t know about sour cream.) Pogacsa do often have sour cream in the dough. But it could be all these cookie-biscuit type things intersecting.

Yeah, my grandpa was Polish and my grandma is Slovak. So I grew up with a mishmash of Slovish terms. :slight_smile: I know that there are some recipes out there for kolace with sour cream, probably just because it depended on what was available to immigrants?

Now I really want some walnut kolace.

Another one I just thought of is the Polish kocie oczka (“cat’s eyes”). Those are usually made with sour cream and butter in the dough, in a roundish shape, but with a dollop of jam in the center (to make the cat’s eye.)

Perhaps paczki? The store I work at sells these every year around Mardi Gras time.

:confused: Paczki are doughnuts, not cookies.

Awwwwww yeah!

Thank you thank you thank you!

Followed pulykamell’s link and those sounded right. Funny thing is that that thread mentioned the Hungarian Pastry Shop by Columbia—I can’t tell you how many hours I spent there studying away! What a small world.

My mom was a bit leery of the recipe’s call for a half cup of sour cream and two egg yolks for four cups of flour. But the spelling made all the difference and we found these. She made them and that was it! Clearly not exactly the same, but close enough for fond memories.

Thanks!