When there is a gathering, you want to serve something truly unique. Cakes are delicious, but in many households, cookies take center stage. They’re undoubtedly easier to serve than cakes and don’t require any utensils to consume, making them excellent for large family gatherings.

These Polish kolache biscuits are a popular snack in many parts of the country. The pronunciation of this cookie is “co-watch-key” in Poland and “co-latch-y” in the United States. These cookies are truly amazing, no matter how you say or spell their name.They feature a thick, but not overly sweet cookie dough basis. This is balanced by a dollop of sweet jam or preserves in the center. They form an excellent pairing, and I can attest from personal experience that one can never have enough of these delectable cookies.

The main recipe simply calls for six ingredients, making it extremely easy to procure and create. The only drawback to these cookies is that the dough must be chilled before being worked into form. Because the dough is quite soft, you will need to chill it before making these cookies. That’s because there’s cream cheese in the mix, which adds a nice tangy flavor. Once the dough has cold, stretch it out and cut it into squares.

If you have trouble eyeballing equal squares, you can create a template or just wing it like I did. The squares should be about 2 1/2′′ long on each edge and 1/4′′ thick. Because these blow up a little in the oven, there’s no need to make them thicker unless you prefer them that way.

I baked one batch of these cookies with apricot preserves and one with black currant jam to add some diversity. You can make these cookies with any jam you choose. I recommend jams and preserves over jellies so that the filling does not spill out over the pan when baking. The thicker ones do best in high temperatures.

On that basis, each square just requires a small amount of jam. These can also leak if they are overfilled. The cookies can be dusted with powdered sugar as a last step, but I prefer them plain.