This pastry is very popular in countries of ex-USSR. The shape is what gave them their russian name – “hvorost” – which means “dry wood used to make a fire”. Ukrainian name – “khrustyky” – describes texture – which it very crisp.
I had troubles trying to figure out what english name to use for this dish. Even if there is an equivalent of it in cuisine of some english speaking country, I don’t know about it.
So, feel free to let me know if you have some ideas in this regard 🙂
Ingredients:
3/4 cup of kefir
1 egg (you will actually need only yolk for this recipe)
1.5 tablespoon of sugar
1/3 teaspoon of baking soda
2-3 cups of all purpose flour
1 tablespoon of vegetable oil for dough
2 cups of vegetable oil for frying
1 tablespoon powdered sugar
How to prepare, step-by-step:
Prepare ingredients: amount of flour you need will vary, so be prepared to use more or less if needed:
Khrustyky Pastry (Hvorost) Recipe: Step 1
Separate egg yolk from egg white (you will only need yolk for this recipe, here are some recipes for egg whites if you are interested):
Khrustyky Pastry (Hvorost) Recipe: Step 2
Pour about 2 cups of flour to the mixing bowl, make a small dip in the middle and add egg yolk:
Khrustyky Pastry (Hvorost) Recipe: Step 3
Add sugar, if you like it more sweet you can do more than 1.5 tablespoons, just follow your taste:
Khrustyky Pastry (Hvorost) Recipe: Step 4
Add a table spoon of vegetable oil:
Khrustyky Pastry (Hvorost) Recipe: Step 6
And about 3/4 of kefir cup:
Khrustyky Pastry (Hvorost) Recipe: Step 7
Mix ingredients with a fork until you get dough:
Khrustyky Pastry (Hvorost) Recipe: Step 8a
Once dough is homogeneous, start mixing more flour in, spoon by spoon:
Khrustyky Pastry (Hvorost) Recipe: Step 8b
Until dough gets stiff enough to be kneaded, then dust place where you will be kneading dough with flour (I used wooden board) and pour dough over it:
Khrustyky Pastry (Hvorost) Recipe: Step 8c
Dust dough with flour and knead it with hands, add more flour if needed:
Khrustyky Pastry (Hvorost) Recipe: Step 8d
Knead dough until it stops sticking to hands:
Khrustyky Pastry (Hvorost) Recipe: Step 8e
Dust it with flour, cover with plastic wrap and let it rest for 15-20 mins:
Khrustyky Pastry (Hvorost) Recipe: Step 8f
Slice piece of dough and knead it a bit more (dust with flour if needed) and roll out into about 3 mm thin sheet, I usually make it wide and short, it is easier to make all pastries the same size that way:
Khrustyky Pastry (Hvorost) Recipe: Step 9
Using a knife slice sheet into rectangles about 1 inch wide, length of them should be smaller then the cooking pot you will be using to fry pastries in:
Khrustyky Pastry (Hvorost) Recipe: Step 10
To form a khrustyky pastry shape, cut a slit in the center of one dough rectangle (lengthwise):
Khrustyky Pastry (Hvorost) Recipe: Step 11a
Take one side of the rectangle:
Khrustyky Pastry (Hvorost) Recipe: Step 11b
And pull it though the slit:
Khrustyky Pastry (Hvorost) Recipe: Step 11c
You will get something like this:
Khrustyky Pastry (Hvorost) Recipe: Step 11d
Repeat with the rest:
Khrustyky Pastry (Hvorost) Recipe: Step 11e
Warm up about 1.5-2 cups of vegetable oil in the narrow cooking pot (I used sauce pan) over moderate heat. Add several khrustyky pastries to the oil (they should float in the oil) and fry on one side until golden brown:
Khrustyky Pastry (Hvorost) Recipe: Step 12
Then flip to the other side and fry until brown as well:
Khrustyky Pastry (Hvorost) Recipe: Step 13
Move prepared pastries to the paper towel (if you have use slotted spoon to leave oil in the pot). Then repeat from 9 to step 14 for the rest of the dough:
Khrustyky Pastry (Hvorost) Recipe: Step 14
Then arrange cooled down pastries on the big plate and season then with powdered sugar (a put a bit of powdered sugar in the small sieve and shake it over the plate):
Khrustyky Pastry (Hvorost) Recipe: Step 15
Serve as dessert:
Khrustyky Pastry (Hvorost) Recipe: Step 16
I have been making these for many years. I found a easier way to make them thin, I roll dough in rectangle loosely, cut strips and then pass them through a pasta machine. Save so much time and muscles and more even thickness.
I grew eating these, my mother or grandmother would make them by the case load. The only difference in my ” family recipe” is that my mother and my grandmother would have never used Kefir in any receipe, it wasn’t something they had at “home”. They did however use sourcream with a little milk added to it. Fresh out of the fryer just sugared or much later well cooled, they were a great munchie usualy at Christmas and Easter.
Hello Julia,
I am a Czech woman and when searching for a celery root salad recipe I’ve found your very nice and inspiring website 🙂
Regarding your Khrustyky Pastry recipe I can say that Hungarians make very similar pastry named Csöröge fánk (i.e. rattle donut), for snaps try Google. In Poland you can take a taste of Faworki also named Chrusty. Faworki is the name of French origin (from faveur, that means a bow). In my country we are used to prepare a bit different pastry, see here: http://www.nejrecept.cz/recept/pivni-bozi-milosti-r1120 The dough is prepared with beer but I know another dough that is prepared with sour cream and white wine. It is our carnival sweet treat. As Levko says above, it must be Slavic recipe, maybe adopted from France.
My mum makes them for me.
I have made them with here.
I am Ukrainian by decent and I call then khrust but I found they are called
Ukrainian Khrusty/Verhuny – Crispy Twigs or Angel Wings and have seen them referred to as Bow Ties.
I have seen them made by Greeks as well.
I like the name Khrust.
As it is a sweet dough it would be more likely to be Slavic than Mediterranean I would think in origin as Slavic people live in cold conditions and are preservative experts with sugar and salt. Most of the Greek desserts are also not ornate in appearance. A bow tie is considered ornate.
Hello,
I am a an English woman living in Canada since 1967 and my Mother-in-Law who is Ukranian called Khrustyky (for my sake l think) “Sweet Nothings” of course now l do all of the traditional dishes and even speak the language somewhat
Whole batch yielded by this recipe is pictured on the first photo of the recipe. I don’t remember exact amount of cookies, but it will also depend on the size you cut the dough pieces into.
Hello, my half-romanian half-russian mother made those pastry for me when I was a child; in romanian they are called “fleoncuri”, at least in her village, which refers to their shape resembling the bow of a ribbon. I also heard people calling them “pişcoturi” whic means something similar to “pastry”.
I like your site very much:)
My Baba was old ukrainian lady who loved to cook all the time. Baba didn’t have a recipe book it was always in her head. She made these for us kids all the time and she knew the ukrainian name but for us she called them (nothings) they were always soooo good when she made them. She even made them for the great grand-children and they always ask why we can’t make them.Since her passing, us cousins have been trying to find the recipe. I sure hope this is it, I will let you know how they turn out. Thank you for helping out.
My Grandma would make these for me every Christmas, I loved them and Ive missed them since her passing. She made them without a recipe. She was luthuanian, and we called them O-sue-keys. Im so glad for uto post this recipe.Now I can start to make them for my grandkids every christmas.
I usually get kefir from Whole foods or Ukrainian store, it is fermented sour milk. Butter milk can be used instead I think (but I never did it myself), or in worst case sour cream diluted with milk.
There are many names for these in Italian. Probably the most common name in Italty is “cenci” (both c’s are pronounced like English ‘ch’), which means “rags”. They’re also called “chiacchere” (all the c’s are pronounced like English ‘k’ because of the h’s), which means ‘gossip’, “guanti”, which means “gloves”, “fritelle”, which means “little fried things”.
In English, they’re usually called “bowtie cookies”. You don’t see them much in the U.S. because people have pretty much abandoned frying (except in the South).
Btw, the English word for “dry wood to make a fire” is “kindling”.
In Australia this sweet is known as crostoli (thanks to Italian immigrants). However,Wikipedia has an article which refers to it as “angel’s wings”, among other names in various languages…
My Italian mother-in law said they are called “Chiacchiere”… ONly she makes them as bow-ties.. I think in english ( if you are in italian community in NY) they call them “crostoli”.
THanks for your wonderful website!
Oh, nice 🙂 thank you for the name. I believe almost every European country has some variation of this recipe in their cuisine 🙂 At least I know about Finland and Romania (and ofc all USSR republics 🙂 ), now adding Italy to this list 🙂
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I have been making these for many years. I found a easier way to make them thin, I roll dough in rectangle loosely, cut strips and then pass them through a pasta machine. Save so much time and muscles and more even thickness.
I grew eating these, my mother or grandmother would make them by the case load. The only difference in my ” family recipe” is that my mother and my grandmother would have never used Kefir in any receipe, it wasn’t something they had at “home”. They did however use sourcream with a little milk added to it. Fresh out of the fryer just sugared or much later well cooled, they were a great munchie usualy at Christmas and Easter.
Hello Julia,
I am a Czech woman and when searching for a celery root salad recipe I’ve found your very nice and inspiring website 🙂
Regarding your Khrustyky Pastry recipe I can say that Hungarians make very similar pastry named Csöröge fánk (i.e. rattle donut), for snaps try Google. In Poland you can take a taste of Faworki also named Chrusty. Faworki is the name of French origin (from faveur, that means a bow). In my country we are used to prepare a bit different pastry, see here: http://www.nejrecept.cz/recept/pivni-bozi-milosti-r1120 The dough is prepared with beer but I know another dough that is prepared with sour cream and white wine. It is our carnival sweet treat. As Levko says above, it must be Slavic recipe, maybe adopted from France.
My mum makes them for me.
I have made them with here.
I am Ukrainian by decent and I call then khrust but I found they are called
Ukrainian Khrusty/Verhuny – Crispy Twigs or Angel Wings and have seen them referred to as Bow Ties.
I have seen them made by Greeks as well.
I like the name Khrust.
As it is a sweet dough it would be more likely to be Slavic than Mediterranean I would think in origin as Slavic people live in cold conditions and are preservative experts with sugar and salt. Most of the Greek desserts are also not ornate in appearance. A bow tie is considered ornate.
Hello,
I am a an English woman living in Canada since 1967 and my Mother-in-Law who is Ukranian called Khrustyky (for my sake l think) “Sweet Nothings” of course now l do all of the traditional dishes and even speak the language somewhat
How much does this recipe yield?
Whole batch yielded by this recipe is pictured on the first photo of the recipe. I don’t remember exact amount of cookies, but it will also depend on the size you cut the dough pieces into.
Thank you for the reply.
Hello, my half-romanian half-russian mother made those pastry for me when I was a child; in romanian they are called “fleoncuri”, at least in her village, which refers to their shape resembling the bow of a ribbon. I also heard people calling them “pişcoturi” whic means something similar to “pastry”.
I like your site very much:)
Thank you!
My Baba was old ukrainian lady who loved to cook all the time. Baba didn’t have a recipe book it was always in her head. She made these for us kids all the time and she knew the ukrainian name but for us she called them (nothings) they were always soooo good when she made them. She even made them for the great grand-children and they always ask why we can’t make them.Since her passing, us cousins have been trying to find the recipe. I sure hope this is it, I will let you know how they turn out. Thank you for helping out.
Thanks 🙂
From what I remember all English speaking people I knew called these deep fried treats “nothings” because they were so light and airy.
I grew up calling this delicouos pasty – ‘Nothings”
My Grandma would make these for me every Christmas, I loved them and Ive missed them since her passing. She made them without a recipe. She was luthuanian, and we called them O-sue-keys. Im so glad for uto post this recipe.Now I can start to make them for my grandkids every christmas.
The name in Spain is “Hojuelas” . My grandmother on Mom side was from Andalucia.
Thank you for the info 🙂
Brushwood, deep fried cookie
Can I ask, what using kefir is for? I am dying to make the recipe, but I have never heard of this in Ukrainian/Slav food. Thanks!
I usually get kefir from Whole foods or Ukrainian store, it is fermented sour milk. Butter milk can be used instead I think (but I never did it myself), or in worst case sour cream diluted with milk.
There are many names for these in Italian. Probably the most common name in Italty is “cenci” (both c’s are pronounced like English ‘ch’), which means “rags”. They’re also called “chiacchere” (all the c’s are pronounced like English ‘k’ because of the h’s), which means ‘gossip’, “guanti”, which means “gloves”, “fritelle”, which means “little fried things”.
In English, they’re usually called “bowtie cookies”. You don’t see them much in the U.S. because people have pretty much abandoned frying (except in the South).
Btw, the English word for “dry wood to make a fire” is “kindling”.
In Australia this sweet is known as crostoli (thanks to Italian immigrants). However,Wikipedia has an article which refers to it as “angel’s wings”, among other names in various languages…
I believe “The fry dough” is an English equivalent for this pastry.
Thanks!
My Italian mother-in law said they are called “Chiacchiere”… ONly she makes them as bow-ties.. I think in english ( if you are in italian community in NY) they call them “crostoli”.
THanks for your wonderful website!
Oh, nice 🙂 thank you for the name. I believe almost every European country has some variation of this recipe in their cuisine 🙂 At least I know about Finland and Romania (and ofc all USSR republics 🙂 ), now adding Italy to this list 🙂