Pierogies with Farmer's Cheese (Vareniki s Tvorogom)
Pierogie recipe made with a homemade pierogi dough filled with sugared berries.
Ingredients
Dough:
- 1 egg
- 1 cup water
- 1/3 cup milk
- 4 to 4 1/4 cups flour
- 1 tsp salt
- Flour for dusting
Filling
- 16 oz farmer’s cheese
- 8 oz cream cheese
- 1 cup sugar
Berries:
- 1 can cherries
- 6 oz blueberries
- Butter
Instructions
Making the Dough
- Add the dough hook to the Kitchen Aid mixer. Mix the milk, salt, egg and water.
- Add the flour, continue mixing until dough is smooth and flour is well incorporated. (Dough should not stick to your hands.)
- Keep covered in the bowl and let dough rest 10-15 minutes.
Filling:
- Combine farmer’s cheese, cream cheese and sugar. If your filling is lumpy and hard you can add a teaspoon(s) of sour cream so it is smoother. (Or you can also add half and egg instead of the sour cream.) Don’t add too much, pierogies are boiled the filling will become too runny. Mine works fine without the sour cream.
Making the Pierogies:
- Divide dough into three balls. Leave one out to use and the other two place back into the bowl. Keep covered.
- Add flour to your surface. Roll out the first dough to about 15-16 inches in diameter. (Depending if you like your dough thicker or thinner.) Dust dough for easier rolling.
- Take a glass with an opening of 3” in diameter and make indentations in the dough. Push all the way through.
- Remove the dough you will not be using and place in bag or cover with plastic so it does not dry up. I like to remove dough I won’t use so no filling falls on it then it’s harder to work with. Do this each time you roll out more dough. Don’t mix it when adding the second and third dough, this will be done when rolling the dough out.
- To the first round just add some farmer’s cheese filling. Add a teaspoon of filling to each piece of dough.
- Take one and stretch the edges and bring them together. Finish pinching together and place onto floured plate or cutting board for freezing. Dust top with more flour. This way they do not stick together once frozen and placed in a bag.
- Second round we do blueberries. Add less filling and about 3-4 berries onto each dough. Close the same way you did the cheese filling ones. I freeze the cheese, blueberry and cherry separately and bag separately. On the bag I like to add which one is which. Then when I am in the more for blueberries I know just the bag to open.
- Third round I do the cherries. I remove the cherries from the filling, place in a strainer and run under water so there is little filling and so the pierogies will close easier and the filling not go everywhere. Do the cherries the same way you would the blueberries. Add a little bit of the cheese filling and one or two cherries.
- Take the leftover dough. Shape it into a ball then roll out into long strand. With a pizza cutter cut into thin slices. Take each slice and shape it into a round piece. I just take each pieces and roll a rolling pin over it so it’s even. If you do it this way you don’t have to keep having leftover dough. Or you could just roll it out again like you did the previous ones.
- Keep in freezer until completely frozen and hard. Remove from freezer and add to bags. Return back to freezer until ready to use.
- To cook the pierogies, bring water to a boil (the amount with reflect how much pierogies you will be adding).
- Once the water starts boiling add the pierogies and once they start to float cook about 1-2 minutes. Don’t overcook or else the filling will start to come out.
- Drain water. Add butter. Enjoy!