These pastries are made of a dough consisting of quark, butter and flour. The dough is rolled out, cut into squares, filled with plum or apricot jam and folded into star-shaped pastries.

Ready-made plum and apricot jams and marmalades especially intended to be used as filling in these pastries can be found sold in Finnish stores, but the homemade jams have a slightly better taste.

Plum filling is the more traditional choice, but some prefer apricot with its tarter flavour.

250 g butter
250 g smooth, soft quark
250 g flour
1 - 2 egg yolks
plum or apricot filling, see below

100 ml pitted prunes
100 ml water
50 ml sugar
(cinnamon)
(vanilla sugar or vanilla extract)

100 ml dried apricots
100 ml water
50 ml sugar
(lemon juice)
(almond extract)

Preparing the filling(s):
The plum or/and apricot jams can be prepared several days in advance. Place the thoroughly rinsed prunes or apricots in a small saucepan. Pour over the sugar and water. Prick the fruit with a fork or a toothpick.

Depending on the moisture content of the type of dried fruit used, the amount of liquid left in the pan may vary. However, most of it should be absorbed in the fruit by the end of cooking.

Puree the mixture with a hand blender  —  be careful not to burn yourself, as the hot mixture may splash. If you like an even smoother puree, rub it through a fine sieve.

You can flavour the plum mixture with a dash of powdered cinnamon and vanilla sugar or extract, and the apricot mixture with a dash of lemon juice and a few drops of almond extract. Spoon the hot jam in clean jars, sterilized with boiling hot water. Cover tightly with sterilized lids and store in refrigerator.

Preparing the pastry dough:
The dough may be prepared a couple of days in advance. Formed into a flat square, store the dough in refrigerator, wrapped in plastic.

Bring the butter to room temperature. Mix the quark with a fork until smooth. Blend the softened butter thoroughly with the quark by hand. You can use a fork, a spoon or your clean hands. Add the flour, stirring gently. Mix just enough to get the ingredients blended. Shape the dough into a flat square, wrap it in plastic wrap and place in refrigerator to harden.

Forming and baking the pastries:
Dust a parchment paper lightly with flour, place the dough on it, dust it with flour and top with another parchment paper. (You can divide the dough into 2 - 4 pieces to make the handling and rolling of it easier.) Roll out the dough into a square approximately 5 mm thick. Remove the upper parchment paper carefully. Cut the dough with a cookie wheel into equal-sized squares, about 8 × 8 cm in size (see figure 1 below).

Figure 1	Figure 2	Figure 3
	Figure 4	Figure 5

Cut the corners of each little square the way it is shown in figure 2 above. Put approximately 1 tablespoon (or less) of plum or apricot filling in the middle of each square (figure 3). Fold every second tip of the slit corners towards the centre to form a pinwheel-shape and press the tips together firmly (figures 4 and 5). Take the leftover pieces of dough and repeat the rolling and cutting process. If the dough warms up and gets too sticky to handle, place it in refrigerator for a while.

Brush the pastries lightly with egg yolk and bake at 225 °C for about 10 - 15 minutes or until they are golden brown and slightly puffed. Let the pastries cool down a bit on a wire rack and, if preferred, sift some icing sugar on them. Serve the pastries accompanied by glögg, or with tea or coffee.

You may use puff pastry (pâte feuilletée) instead of the quark-butter dough. The former makes puffy and flaky pastries  —  and this is the way they are usually done  —  the latter flatter and not as attractive, but much tastier, in my opinion :-)

Serving suggestion:
These Christmas pastries are traditionally served with red Christmas glögg.