Syrna Zapiekanka or Ukrainian baked sweet curd is one of my favourite dishes! Andriy’s mum makes it all the time when we visit and we eat it sometimes for breakfast and sometimes as dessert or simply as a snack! Olga usually mixes blueberries and blackcurrents in soured cream and serves dollops of this with the baked cheese curd!

It doesn’t have much sugar in it because its naturally sweet and filling due to the cheese and eggs. From it’s appearance it reminds me of a plain frittata or quiche. I’m not sure if you can call it paleo, some people on the paleo diet still eat dairy but it certainly is naturally gluten free! The word Zapiekanka means baked so you might hear /see this a lot in Ukrainian recipes while Syr means cheese. There’s only four ingredients so this makes it perfectly easy to whip up last minute if someone is coming for tea / dinner or if you fancy something sweet! Enjoy a culinary delight from Ukraine!

What you need to know:
Prep time: 5 mins
Bake time: 40 mins
Oven Temp.: 180°C

Ingredients for 4 small portions, 17 cm casserole dish:
400 g curd cheese (or cottage cheese / Ricotta cheese drained from fluids)
(the higher the fat content the better!)
3 large eggs
2 tbsp honey 
handful of raisins (optional)
2 heaped tsp vanilla infused coconut sugar or 1 tsp vanilla extract

Method:

1. Preheat the oven and butter or grease a small casserole dish or deep baking dish

2. Put the eggs and drained cheese / curd into the dish and beat well until mixed and gloopy. Add the honey, raisins if using and vanilla sugar / extract and stir until everything is well combined.

3. Place in oven for 35-40 mins until golden brown on top and no longer runny.

4. Remove from the oven, let it cool for 10 mins to firm up then slice into quarters and serve warm with cream and berries or on it’s own.

This is the cheese I buy in Germany should you want to see what it looks like or if you can read Russian. I buy it from a Russian supermarket here.