Today, I’m coming with another specialty of Polish cuisine. I’m not sure how to properly describe it in English keeping the word count down to a title-acceptable amount. I guess the best match would be something between dumplings and gnocchi (which are also a type of dumplings actually, aren’t they?). “Kopytka”, in Polish, translate to hooves. That’s because traditionally, you’d shape the dough into a roll, flatten it slightly, and cut diagonally into parallelograms (getting mathematical here, sorry!). These shapes resemble the shape of horse hooves (if you look at horse feet from the side – not that you’d ever have a reason to look at horse hooves from the side, but just saying). Mine don’t look like hooves, for just one simple reason – I’m too lazy to roll and cut the dough. Instead, I just shaped the dough into balls.

These dumplings are actually a sweet dish – an alternative to breakfast pancakes, also great if you feel like having something sweet for dinner.

Although it’s a sweet recipe, it’s actually also a super healthy one. Quark cheese is a great source of lean protein. Whole wheat flour, on the other hand, comes brings a lot of fiber.

For 2 servings:

• 200g quark cheese
• 1 teaspoon honey
• a few drops of vanilla extract
• a sprinkle of cinnamon
• 1/2 cup whole wheat flour (plain flour works too)
• 1 egg

Put all ingredients in a dish and mash them together with a fork.

Using your hands, form little balls (or, if you’d prefer to stick to traditional methods, make a long roll, flatten it and cut diagonally creating small dumplings).

In a pot, heat up water with a teaspoon of oil (it will prevent dumplings from sticking to each other), bring it to boil. Throw dumplings into the boiling water and cook them on low heat.

The dumplings will drop to the bottom of the pot when thrown in the water. After a while, they should swim up to the surface – from that point, continue to cook them for another 7 minutes.

After that time, take the dumplings out of the pot (the easiest way to do it is by using a slotted spoon).

The dumplings aren’t overly sweet themselves. Serve them with sweet toppings. The most traditional way would be to serve them with melted butter and sugar. I went for two other options this time:

strawberries and chocolate sauce…

…and honey with cinnamon.

• Sweet