Vatrushki (russian cottage cheese buns)

Ingredients

Dough:

• 600 ml all-purpose flour
• 250 g sour cream
• 200 g margarine, chilled and chopped
• 40 g fresh yeast
• 2 tablespoons sugar

Filling:

• 500 g unsalted cottage cheese
• 1 tablespoons sour cream
• 50 g butter, melted
• 7 tablespoons sugar
• 1 1/2 teaspoon vanilla sugar
• 2 eggs
• 100 g dried apricots, diced
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

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Preparation

• Making the dough:
  Blend fresh yeast and sugar with a fork until liquid. Stir in sour cream. Add chopped margarine and gradually add flour, crumbling the dough with a sharp knife as you go. When you have added all flour and you have a bowl of nice crumbs, knead the dough by hand until smooth. Refrigerate for an hour.
• Making the filling:
  Combine melted butter, sugar, and vanilla sugar, and blend with a fork. Add eggs and beat with a fork until well-blended. Pour this mixture into your cottage cheese, add sour cream and stir well. Fold in diced dried apricots.
• Assembly and baking:
  Sprinkle some flour onto your working surface. Roll the dough until 3-4mm thick and cut out circles that are 10cm in diameter . Reserve some dough for making the borders. Form the reserved dough into thin “snakes” and border the edges of your circles with these “snakes”. Stick the borders to the bottoms using your fingers.
• Fill the Vatrushki shells with cottage cheese filling and dust with cinnamon. Optionally, brush the dough with beaten egg.
• Bake at 200C until the dough has baked through . Serve warm or at room temperature.