Sochniki, Vatrushki, and What Tvorog Actually Is

If you take the Russian baking repertoire and remove one ingredient, about a third of it disappears. That ingredient is tvorog, and it is not sold in British supermarkets under any name that would help you find it.

Sochniki, vatrushki, syrniki, the choux rings, half the pies and a good deal of what people eat for breakfast all rest on it. So it is worth explaining properly rather than translating it badly and moving on.

What tvorog is

Soured milk, gently heated, drained of its whey. That is the entire process.

What you get is a soft white cheese with a fine grain, mildly sour, not salted, and much drier than anything comparable sold here. It is somewhere between ricotta and cottage cheese and it is neither.

Ricotta is made from whey rather than curd, and it is smoother, wetter and blander. Cottage cheese is the closest by process, but British cottage cheese is sold wet, in its own liquid, with salt added, and it has large loose curds. Tvorog is pressed, dry to the touch, crumbly, and unsalted, and that dryness is what makes it possible to bake with.

Put wet cottage cheese into a sochnik filling and you get a puddle. This is why substitutions in Russian recipes written for a British kitchen so often fail, and why most people who cook these properly here either drain cottage cheese overnight or make their own.

Sochniki

The name comes from sochny, juicy, which is a promise rather than a description of the pastry.

A sochnik is a round of sweet shortcrust with a mound of sweetened tvorog on one half, folded over so that the filling is half covered and half exposed. It is not sealed. The open face is the point: the exposed filling browns slightly in the oven and takes on a baked edge while the covered part stays soft.

They are a bakery staple rather than a special occasion item. In Russia a sochnik is what you buy with a coffee, and the standard of the average one is not high, which is why a good one is memorable.

Sochniki - 6 PiecesSochniki, six pieces. Folded shortcrust pastries with a sweet tvorog filling, the Soviet bakery staple.£28Order this

Vatrushki

A vatrushka is the other shape: a soft yeasted bun with a well pressed into the middle and tvorog spooned into it, so the filling sits like a yolk in a nest.

The dough is enriched, which means egg, butter and milk in it, and it bakes soft and slightly sweet. The contrast is between that softness and the denser, cooler, faintly sour filling, and a good one has a real difference between the two rather than everything tasting the same.

Ours are made with vanilla in the tvorog and fresh strawberries on top, which is a summer version rather than the plain year round one. The plain original often has raisins in it.

Strawberry VatrushkiStrawberry vatrushki. Soft buns with a vanilla tvorog centre and fresh strawberries.£32Order this

The choux rings

The third one in the family. Choux pastry, baked as rings, split and filled with tvorog cream rather than with the custard or whipped cream a French pastry would use.

This is a specifically Soviet solution and it comes from the same place as everything else here: tvorog was abundant and reliable, double cream was not. What it produces is a filling that is lighter than custard, tangier than whipped cream, and considerably less sweet than either, and a choux ring filled this way is far easier to eat two of.

Choux Pastry Rings - 4 PiecesChoux pastry rings filled with smooth tvorog cream, four pieces. A Soviet bakery classic.£30Order this

Why these are hard to buy here

Not because they are difficult to make. Because they do not keep.

All three are at their best within a day. Tvorog is a fresh cheese, the pastry around it is soft, and a shelf life of days is simply not available without changing the recipe into something else. Any supermarket version has been engineered for a week of life, and that engineering is exactly what removes the point.

Made to order solves this the way it solves the trubochki problem. They are made for the date you choose and eaten within a day or two of it.

Where to find tvorog in London

Since the ingredient is the whole problem, here is what actually works if you want to cook with it.

Polish, Russian, Lithuanian and Latvian grocers sell it under its own name or as twaróg, and the Polish version is the most widely available in London. It comes in a block, it is dry to the touch, and it is exactly right.

Supermarket quark is the best mainstream substitute, and it needs draining: a sieve lined with muslin, overnight in the fridge, and you will be surprised how much whey comes out.

Cottage cheese works if you drain it hard and then press it, and you should push it through a sieve afterwards to break the large curds down. It will still be saltier than tvorog, so reduce the salt in whatever you are making.

Ricotta is the worst of the usual substitutes despite being the one most often suggested. It is made from whey rather than curd, it is wetter, and it has a sweetness that reads wrong in a savoury filling.

If all of that sounds like an evening's work, that is roughly the reason these pastries are ordered rather than made.

Common questions

What is tvorog in English?

There is no good single word. It is a fresh, drained, unsalted curd cheese. Quark is the closest widely sold equivalent in Britain, and well drained cottage cheese is the usual substitute in recipes.

Are these sweet or savoury?

Sweet, all three, but only mildly. The tvorog itself is not sweetened much, so they are far less sugary than most British pastries of similar size.

What are the allergens?

Gluten, eggs and milk in all three. No nuts.

How many pieces come in a box?

Sochniki come as six, the vatrushki as four and the choux rings as four.

How long do they keep?

A day or two in the fridge, and they are noticeably better on the first. Take them out of the fridge twenty minutes before eating.

Can I have vatrushki without the strawberries?

The version on the site is the strawberry one. For anything else, message us before ordering and we will tell you what is possible for your date.

Handmade Sirniki£18Trubochki “22 Kopeyki” - 5 Pieces£31

Ordering in London

All three are made to order in Belgravia and delivered across London and Surrey. Forty eight hours notice, £12 delivery in central London, £15 elsewhere, £50 minimum order.