Orechovník & Makovník (Slovak Walnut & Poppyseed Rolls)

It is hard to overstate how excited I am to be sharing this recipe, which has been a work in progress for nearly 5 (!) years. The silver lining to the flaming dumpster fire that was 2020 was more time in the kitchen, and I decided this was the year to successfully recreate my mother’s nut & poppyseed rolls, once and for all. Until this year, all of my attempts have been frustratingly futile – tears were shed, several batches went directly from the oven to the trash bin, and I spent a small fortune on bulk-section walnuts and poppyseed filling (more on that later).

If you grew up in Western Pennsylvania or Ohio, you might be familiar with “nut roll” in one of it’s many forms. The area was a destination for Eastern European immigrants in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, including my mother’s family, who immigrated from what is today Slovakia (their immigration records list “Austria-Hungary”, as in empire) to Cleveland. The nut roll (and it’s sidekick the poppyseed roll) was brought in various forms by the different groups settling the region; the Slovaks contributed orechovník (poppyseed version = makovník), the Hungarians beijgli (or poppyseed makos beijgli), the Slovenians potica/povitica (always made with walnuts), and the Polish makowiec (which refers to the poppyseed version alone). The recipe varies widely, but is some variation on a sweet, yeasted dough, sometimes enriched with sour cream, whole milk or egg yolks, rolled a filling of walnuts or ground poppyseeds mixed with sugar, and baked. When sliced, the rolls reveal a striking swirl of rich, brown walnuts or black poppyseeds. It’s a special occasion treat, reserved for holidays and celebrations; they were an integral part of our Christmas and Easter spread every year. I can’t remember either holiday without a big plate of walnut and poppyseed rolls on the table, neatly sliced and dusted with powdered sugar.

Sadly, I never made the rolls with my mother before she passed away in 2012. The recipe she left behind, neatly written in pencil on a 5″x7″ card, the margins filled with notes, seems straightforward enough: make a yeasted sweet dough, enriched with egg yolks and sour cream, slowly proof overnight in the refrigerator, then fill with either ground walnut or poppyseed filling, rolled, and bake until golden brown. But following the recipe as written has never resulted in the delicious rolls of my childhood memories. The proportions as written produced an overly soft dough with no structure and barely any rise. The nut filling, made with the egg whites not used in the dough and a mountain of white sugar, was wet and heavy – combined with the soft dough, my rolls had a flat, greasy center, nothing at all like the soft, crumbly, buttery swirls my mother produced. The poppyseed filling was my biggest consternation. Her recipe recommends shelf-stable, canned Solo brand poppyseed filling, easily found in the baking aisle next to the cherry and lemon pie fillings. The contents of the can were alien to me, gloopy and sticky, sickeningly sweet, and nothing like the dense and subtly sweet filling in my mother’s version. The dough couldn’t contain the syrupy filling and I ended up with a mess in the oven and a mounting sense of frustration and sadness that I couldn’t get this right with the instructions she left.

Though I desperately wanted this recipe to be an unadulterated link to my mother’s baking legacy, I am starting to suspect there exists an updated recipe card somewhere in my parent’s house that I have yet to find, or that perhaps she committed some recipe tweaks to memory that did not get recorded. I’ve come to terms with the fact that I need outside help to recreate this memory – and so I turned to the magic of internet bakers to help me.

A search for “nut roll” or “poppyseed roll” turns up an overwhelming number of results. I narrowed my search visually, looking for pictures with the filling:dough ratio I remembered, and only included recipes with sour cream as part of the dough – this was essential to take the rolls from the “sweet bread” column into “pastry”, which is where my mother’s version lies. Most called for a much lower sour cream to flour ratio, which stiffened the dough enough to retain its structure and give a good rise. Many of the walnut fillings accompanying these recipes were too far off for me to attempt, so I tinkered with my mom’s formula, reducing the egg whites and sugar to take out some of the excess moisture and weight and give the dough a better chance of rising. My biggest triumph this year came when I discovered the existence of refrigerated pre-made poppyseed filling at our beloved neighborhood Russian grocery (see my Caramel Apple Syrniki post).

Before even opening the package, I could tell the filling was an entirely different beast than the canned gloop I’d been using without success – it was solid, dense, and held it’s shape when turning the package in hand. When spread over the dough it stayed in place and held the entire roll together, even after rising and baking. The results were as close to my memory as I have achieved thus far – I do think I could have spread the filling more thickly, as you can see there was some air gappage in the top layer, but the taste and texture were fairly spot on!

A review of the ingredients in the poppyseed fillings gives a clue into the wildly divergent results between the two – the first ingredients listed in the refrigerated filling were 1. white sugar and 2. poppyseeds, while the ingredients listed on the back of the Solo can were 1. corn syrup and 2. poppyseeds. I suspect, though can’t confirm despite much Googling, that Solo didn’t always use corn syrup in their formulation, which may explain the discrepancy between my childhood memories and adult attempts. Or perhaps my mother had a secret for taming the poppyseed-corn syrup beast that she took with her to the grave. Regardless, I am never going back to Solo – its refrigerated or homemade poppyseed filling from now on for me. (I have never attempted homemade, but there are many recipes on the internet – maybe I’ll give it a go for Easter 2021).

When looking back on this historically weird and sad year, may I remember that 2020 was also the year I finally tamed the poppyseed roll.

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