How to Make Kiffles: A Recipe and Photo Tutorial

For my entire life, my nana made kiffles for Christmas. As a child, I assumed everyone had kiffles for Christmas, just like everyone has turkey for Thanksgiving. I was wrong of course. Kiffles are oddly hyper-local, brought by Hungarian immigrants —like my nana—to this part of eastern Pennsylvania in the early 1900s. I have no idea why this specific cookie only took root here. I tried Googling, and Google helped me not at all. But it doesn’t matter, because the most important thing is that you make them.

Kiffles are cookies. They are made from only five ingredients—butter, flour, cream cheese, egg yolks, and whatever you use for a filling. Traditional fillings are apricot preserves, lekvar (which are prune preserves and which I do not recommend) and crushed walnuts. Most locals I know buy them from the singular kiffle bakery in the area, the Kiffle Kitchen at the Allentown Farmers’ Market. Which is a great choice if you are extremely pressed for time and can afford to spend around a dollar per cookie. I can’t, so I make them myself.

Also I miss my nana and making them makes me happy. I may have bought an entire second Christmas tree, set it up in my kitchen, and covered it with her 1940s glass ornaments just so it could be near me while I baked them. So there’s that.

This is my nana’s actual recipe:

Yes, that reads ‘a handful of sugar’. And there are no actual directions.  Not super helpful.

Underneath that note card there are more hand-written directions but I’m not sure what the directions are for exactly. They may be for kiffles. Or not. And the book it is in? It’s a Hungarian cookbook, which includes several recipes for dios kifli, which both sound like kiffles and also look a bit like them when I google them (go ahead, do it—it’s all in Hungarian.)

So I combined all of that information and made my own recipe. It seems that an important part of making kiffles is writing the recipe down on a ridiculously small piece of paper and sticking it into an existing cook book. So you know, that’s what I did.

Since my notes aren’t much more helpful than my nana’s here it is in plain English and in photo format

6oz cream cheese

2 sticks butter

2 egg yolks

2.5 cups flour

powdered sugar (for rolling and sprinkling)

filling

apricot preserves, lekvar, or ground walnuts

1. Allow cream cheese and butter to come to room temperature.

2. Cream together cream cheese, butter, and egg yolks. If you don’t have a fancy stand mixer, that’s ok–nana didn’t either.

3. Add the flour and knead until no longer sticky.

4. Form into small balls–about half the size of a golf ball.

5. Chill for at least two hours (but maybe not in your garage when it is 19 degrees out because they will freeze and then you will have to wait for them to un freeze…)

6. Roll out each ball individually, using powdered sugar to keep the dough from sticking to the rolling surface.

7. Smear with a thin layer of filling.

8. Roll up dough using your thumbs.

9. Bake for 20 minutes at 350 degrees.

10. Store in an airtight container until Christmas. Dust with powdered sugar before serving.

The biggest complaint about this process is that it takes a long time. And that’s fair. But I had my husband time me, and here’s the time breakdown:

Making dough and rolling into balls: 15 minutes

Rolling out dough, smearing with filling, and rolling into shape: 30 minutes for 30 kiffles

It should be noted that I’m not super fast, nor am I super good at this (yet). So a more adept baker could likely cut this down significantly.

I recommend making a double batch, because even though this really does yield a lot of rather large cookies, they are so good that you will want to make as many as possible. Also, all of your friends, neighbors, and loved ones will want you to make them some. People who have moved away from PA will want you to mail them some. So definitely make extra. Or, you know, just share this post so they can make their own. Because that’s why I wrote it.

Happy holidays, all.