Traditional Kifle Crescent Cookies with Homemade Jam

Kifle are a traditional crescent-shaped pastry with apricot, raspberry, nut or cheese filling. This recipe has been handed down through the generations and is always a part of our Christmas festivities.

I was introduced to Kifle when I met my husband. His family is of Yugoslavian descent, and you’ll find variations on this recipe in Eastern European homes including kifli, kiflice, kifle, or kipferl and its cousin, the kolachi.

There are two components to kifle. The filling and the dough.

Making the Apricot Filling for Kifle

We typically fill our kifle with apricot filling. Some recipes suggest using store-bought apricot preserves. However, store-bought preserves typically have a lot more water in them causing them to run out of the cookies during the baking process.

Our homemade apricot filling in the recipe below isn’t too sweet and adds a rich fruity flavor in every bite.

All you need is water, dried apricots and brown sugar.

Start by heating the dried apricots in water. Once they’ve softened a bit, add in brown sugar and occasionally stir until the fruit starts to fall apart. This takes approximately 20 minutes. From there you can mash up the fruit with the back of your spatula or bust it up with an immersion blender or food processor.

You’ll end up with a rich, flavorful, homemade apricot filling.

And good news, this recipe makes more than enough for the cookies. You’ll end up with a bit leftover that can be used as jam on toast.

Sulfured versus Unsulfured Dried Fruit

You might notice that the dried apricots I use are a deep orange color. That’s because they’re unsulfured, meaning they haven’t been treated with sulfur dioxide.

Sulfur dioxide is used as a preservative in dried fruits, giving them a bright color, which is great if you want your dried fruit to last a long time. But, I like using unsulfured dried apricots for this filling because they often have a richer, more intense flavor, sometimes described as more “caramel-like” or “earthy” compared to their sulfured counterparts.

Sulfured dried apricots will work just as well for this recipe, but the color will be lighter.

Making the Dough

Kifle dough is easy to make. It doesn’t require any fancy equipment, just a bowl, a fork and your hands.

I have seen some recipes suggest using a food processor. However, there’s something therapeutic for me when it comes to kneading dough.

The ingredients for the dough are all-purpose flour, active dry yeast, sour cream, salt, butter, egg yolks and vanilla.

The sour cream adds a nice tangy flavor as well as serves as an acid to help activate leavening in these cookies so that they puff up a bit when they’re baked.

And note that it calls for egg yolks. You’ll want to separate the yolks from the egg whites because including the whites would add too much water to the dough and it won’t hold together. The yolks as a nice golden color in addition to extra richness in your final cookies.

Rolling Kifle

Rolling kifle cookies is a skill that improves with practice. There are three things I do that help set me up for success in shaping my kifle.

First, I weigh the dough ball. Then I divide that total weight by 8. That number gives me the weight I should have to divide the dough into 8 equal portions. Each of those becomes a smaller dough ball which makes forming the cookies easier later in the recipe.

Next, you’ll cover the dough balls with plastic wrap and let them chill in the fridge for an hour. Not only does this develop the flavor but it also strengthens the proteins in the dough so it holds together better when it comes time to roll it out.

Which brings me to the second thing that will help you rolling. Use a baking mat with measurements. I’m not a big kitchen gadget person, but this mat is an excellent guide for rolling out dough to the right diameter. It also helps me see where to make the cuts in the dough.

And the third tip is something I learned from my mother in law who taught me this recipe. Instead of using flour on the work surface which is typical to prevent dough from sticking, use confectioners sugar or powdered sugar. It helps prevent the dough from sticking, but because it’s not an overly sweet cookie, the little added sugar adds nice flavor to the final cookies.

I use a pizza cutter to cut out the rolled dough into eight equal pieces, like a pie.

And then I place a dollop of the apricot filling at the outside edge of a single piece. From there, you’ll start rolling from the wide outer edge of the slice toward the center tip, making sure the filling is trapped inside the roll.

Once you get to the tip of the slice, you’ll secure the ends of the roll to keep the filling securely inside and then roll the outer edges in slightly to get that signature crescent shape.

Once your kifle are rolled, place them on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper or a silicone liner and bake for 13 to 15 minutes at 375F until they’re golden brown and slightly puffed.

Storing and Serving Kifle

Once the kifle have cooled, I place them in an airtight container until I’m ready to serve.

I dust them with powdered sugar right before serving. Wait until serving to add the powdered sugar because it will absorb into the cookies if you do it ahead of time.

The filling is rather tart and there’s no sugar in the dough, so the powdered sugar is the little hit of sweetness that takes these treats to the next level.

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