From The Fairy Tales Land

R. finished my wonder craft room (with laundry devices attached) last week, and it looks like dream! (W. made the pics to document progress). I cannot wait to use it! Right now it is a refuge for our dogs, since the rest of the downstairs is construction area.

Being still in the sweet(s) baking mood, probably as the result of the El Nino's snowy winter we are ploughing through this year, I made a real Honza's buns last weekend. Every true Czech knows the story behind these: the hero of our national fairy tales, the "dumb" Honza, who is not really dumb, but pretends that to swim easily through the life (how very Czech!), is taking these bakery goodies made by his mom for his "journey to the world". He is forced to go when the parent finally looses the patience with the sluggish offspring and kicks him out of the house. Honza usually ends up distributing the sweets among various magical creatures disguised as poor old folks of both gender (in order to test the goodness of Honza's heart), whom H. finds conveniently sitting next the road he is taking. In exchange H. receives helpful objects and eventually a hand of the princess and half of the kingdom (to have nice place to live happily ever after, of course).

I have never made these buns before, but I remember my grandma used to make them sometimes ... I used the recipe I have found in very useful Czech culinary portal Recepty. (500g flour, 250 ml milk, bag of dried yeast, 50 g sugar, 2 yolks, 150 g melted butter, pinch of salt, rum, vanilla & lemon flavor, german plum butter for filling).


The trick is to smear the buns with butter stick and rum right after taking them off the oven, and than cover them with towel for couple of minutes, buns do not harden on the edges so much with this treatment.


I as well finally found a nice cake dome last weekend in IKEA (what would I do without them!), so that may helped too.


I have not received the prince's hand this time (since I already have one at home, happily ever after thank you very much) but I certainly got my craft kingdom in exchange :).