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Wareneki


I have the recipe here for filling with cottage cheese. In german we call this Glums Wareneki.
My mom also made wareneki with Italian plums and rhubarb.

We eat the cottage cheese wareneki first with some sauce and salt and pepper. .
and then end the meal with some of the fruit wareneki. . .with sauce and a sprinkle of sugar.

  • 3/4 cup whipping cream
  • 4 egg whites. . .beaten until soft peaks form
  • 2 teaspoons baking powder
  • 1 teaspoon of salt
  • about. . 2 1/2 cups of flour
  1. Whip the egg whites in a large grease free bowl, add the whipping cream and the baking powder and the salt.
  2. Add the flour a bit at a time. 
  3. Continue to add a bit of flour at a time until you have a soft dough but stiff enough to roll out.
  4. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for an hour while you make the filling.
Cottage Cheese Filling

  • 500 grams. . .or about 2 cups of dry cottage cheese
  • the egg yolks from the eggs above
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  1. Mix together with a pastry blender or put it all in the food processor and mix until the cottage cheese is finely ground. 
  2. Roll the dough out on a slightly floured counter. Add a bit more flour if it is sticky.
  3. You can either start at the top of you dough about 2 inches down and place a teaspoon of filling every three inches leaving room between, then fold the dough down and use a glass to cut out half moons and pinch them shut. 
  4. Or, just use a glass and cut out rounds and then use a small teaspoon and put a bit of filling on your dough and then fold in half and pinch shut Try not to get filling in the area you are pinching shut. 
  5. Put them on a floured parchment papered cookie sheet and keep them in the refrigerator until you are ready to boil them or freeze them on a cookie sheet to use another day.
Plum Wareneki

Slice the plums in half and then depending on how large you are making them, slice them in half again and put them into the dough and pinch shut.

I don't bother to flour them unless I use frozen plums they are a bit trickier to stuff and I find a little flour keeps them less leaky.
  1. To cook Warenki, put a large pot of water on to boil, add a teaspoon of salt.
  2. Gently put the wareneki in the boiling water and bring it back to the boiling point. Boil only a few minutes. Once the wareneki are floating they are done.
  3. Drain in a colander  and serve (a little melted butter helps to keep them from sticking)
Sauce
  • 1 cup whipping cream
  • 1/4 cup butter
  • salt and pepper to taste

  1. Simmer for a few minutes and serve over Warenki. 

I also saute some caramelized onion with the cottage cheese Wareneki.

37 comments:

  1. Mmm....we call them vereniki, and have them either with the cottage cheese filling you mentioned, or with mashed potato, cheddar & onion filling. I've even made some GF vereniki! :) Delicious! I've never tried the plum variety though, that sounds yummy too.

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  2. I never had those but they do sound so yummy!!!! I need to try it !
    Thanks!!!

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  3. Was wondering when a wareneki recipe would surface..thanks Lovella. I have a 'tried and true' recipe but I sure want to try this one as well. Beating the egg whites is different.
    We like glums wareneki with the white gravy/sauce and with Saskatoon sauce. I know I would love plums too, maybe I'll just make a sauce with plums..simplify things!

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  4. To me...this is the essence of my family's home cooked meals...and the most requested items from 'adopted' family members when they return for a visit. I think I must have grown up near Betty...as we have discussed this before...everyone has slightly different twists to their favorite german/mennonite recipes. We always had a sour cream gravy with ours and the saskatoon sauce when available! But one thing is sure...Warenki is a MUST to learn to make. Don't stick with frozen store bought perogies anyone out there...this is the real thing!

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  5. My mom makes this meal for us at least twice a month. It's just so comforting and delicious.
    My boys adore them. Nate can eat up to seven + at a time!
    Often if she doesn't have plums she will use blueberries or blackberries. Equally yummy!

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  6. Mmmm... I will definitely give this version a try. My favorite sauce to accompany the cottage cheese ones starts with an electric fry pan and a half a package of chopped bacon. Fry bacon, sprinkle flour in pan, add milk and lots of cracked pepper. It's not low in fat, but true Mennonite dishes never are, right? Besides, the extra calories keep me warm in these SK winters ;)

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  7. Growing up I had these whenever my grandma came to visit...my mom never made them. Later my MIL kept me supplied...but I've never tried making them myself. There is always a first time...and the plums are in season...so I might just follow your tutorial and see what happens!

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  8. My favorite way to have these as a child was when my mom would brown them in butter the next day and I like them just plain with sugar.
    Sometimes now I secretly (Lovella knows why) make some crepes and fill them with cottage cheese and a sprinkle of sugar and pretend.
    Thank you for sharing this recipe.

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  9. These are great for freezing as well. My MIL makes them for me and I freeze them, and when I need a quick dinner I just put on the water make the sauce and in no time at all....dinner is ready.

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  10. my mom will make mounds of these and have us over for supper, hours of work gobbled up in a matter of minutes. she never seems to mind though, it is a compliment to her.
    when i make them i invite two friends who love these and never make them, so if you wanna eat, come help! lol. i think it is almost time to try them again, and this recipe would be a good alternative.

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  11. I can just smell them and the gravy and Oh, my! My grandmother made them every Friday, so when I stopped by after school, I could fill up.

    Thanks for posting...I tried them once, but I have opted out to Helmi's to help me out.

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  12. You forgot the Rempel's sausage and substitute the drippings from the sausage and it will never be the same.

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  13. I have never tried this recipe but I certainly will. Now I am hungry for them. I have been buying them,but there is nothing like homemade ones served with cream gravy and rhubarb sauce and of course farmer sausage..

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  14. Yummy --- and delish! Our family recipe uses lots of sour cream in the sauce. Otherwise, the sauce is similar. Your dough recipe is unique, though. I suspect my aunties use a recipe similar to what your mother used.

    :) LaTeaDah

    PS: Fav filling; dry cottage cheese mixed with eggs

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  15. Mmm, those look so good! That is definitely a different recipe. I've never seen one with whipping cream and baking powder before! I might have to try it:)

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  16. I will say you are very talented in the kitchen and make it all look so easy... I will give these a go they looks so good. As always thanks for sharing:)

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  17. Sound wonderful! My mom used to make fruit wareneki as well, she made some with orange sections to top off with a "sweet". Sounds like a good dough recipe, different from mine. Thanks for the posting.

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  18. HGi. i just married into a german family and my husband loves wareneki. The problem is trying to find dry cottage cheese. I live in Oregon. If anyone has a idea it would be greatly appreciated. Terry Goertzen

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  19. Terry, I have a friend who uses Ricotta Cheese mixed with some eggs. . .and it tastes great too.

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  20. Made them tonite for dinner!! So yum! Need to work on the dough abit, too thick but we are all so full! I kept telling my husband that these are not perogies, they are vereniki!!!! Yummy sauce and threw in crumbled bacon!

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  21. Hi all, Reading these recipes reminds me of Christmas at my husbands parents home. His mother and sisters-in-law would all get to cooking and the house would smell so wonderful. They took on the task of teaching me these great recipes and when I see that other people love Vereniki just kind of makes me home sick. His family also pronounced them with a Ver... Thank you, Sometimes I come to the site and just read recipes.

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  22. No Dry curd cottage cheese? No problem, just buy small curd cottage cheese and let it 'dry out' in a fine mesh strainer. If you let it sit awhile it really dries out. I've even squeezed out reg. cottage cheese through a clean cheesecloth to get out the whey, and it worked perfectly...oh, and the added egg. Ricotta is too creamy and not the right texture for me.

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  23. My grandma Thiesen used to make these, but her sauces were; browned butter, and sour cream and sugar. She would heat the sour cream in a saucepot and add a little sugar and cook slowly until the sugar was dissolved. In a separate small pan, she would slowly cook butter until it lightly browned. I married a Friesen, and my wonderful mother-in-law made ham gravy for her verenike. I just couldn't get used to that. When my husband and I went to Russia to visit his family, they made verenike for us, and what do you know? They made browned butter and sweet sour cream sauce, just like my grandma's. Heaven! I never learned how to make them, and grandma has been gone a long time, but I think I will have to give it a try. Thank you so much for sharing these wonderful recipes. Brings back all the memories of my grandma's cooking on the farm.

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  24. Vereneke/Vereneki/Wereneke has been my favourite dish since I was a small child. We always made them with either rhubarb filling or dry cottage cheese:

    http://indirectheat.blogspot.com/2009/08/wereneke.html

    We still make them a few times a year, when my mom visits and brings us some dry cottage cheese. I've never seen dry cottage cheese anywhere in the U.S., and drying out normal cottage cheese works, but isn't as tasty.

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  25. I live in California and we use Hoop cheese. It is a dry cottage cheese. We usually find it in the freezer section.

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  26. Has anyone tried making their own Glums? (cottage cheese) My mother always made her own to fill the vereniki, I find those better than the store bought cottage cheese :)

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  27. My Friesen Mom made these for my birthday meal. We put Roger's Golden Syrup on them as well - and had to bring that home from Canada as we lived in PA. My dad is a Wiebe - no syrup used in that home.
    LOVE these

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  28. mmm better then my grandmas dough and thats saying something :) will never use another recipe for these again.
    from a Bueckert in Alberta

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  29. Schmondtfat is a must for these. Oak smoked farmer sausage(homemade is best) fried with lid on, let warscht(sausage) sweat until browned, remove sausage and cook off the liquid , put in pint of whipping cream and reduce until thickened(most Mennonites would thicken different). Put on glums warenki, eat with sausage and feel your arteries harden, this is fabulous.

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    Replies
    1. Yes!!! Thank you!! You are the first person I have heard call it schmondtfat, and how it's made!! People look at me like I'm nuts when I call the "gravy" that! I don't use whipping cream (flour and either 'half and half' or creamo or even just milk) But either way it's soooo yummy!!!

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  30. My Grandma would mix rhubarb in with teh cottage cheese mixture. She would fry ham, and use the drippings with sour cream to make the gravy/sauce! Oh she alsways said she took out the calories when she made it! LOL

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  31. As a child, my favourite fall meal was Plum vareniki served with a large spoonful of sweetened whipped cream!!! My Mom always used whole plums and we loved to keep track of how many we ate by the number of pits on our plate. It was a contest to see who could eat the most!!! I know now that this was NOT a nutrionally sound meal plan but, as Lovelia mentioned, it was good for the soul which is worth something. My children grew up with the same tradition--looking forward to eating plum vareniki once every fall when the prune plums were at the fruit stands.
    The children are all gone from home, but I will enjoy that tradition tonight with my husband (a Scot who loves my Mennonite cooking!!) and there will be enough made to put some away in the freezer. I am going to use this recipe for the dough since it sounds like it has solved the problem of leaking.

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  32. A nice topping for this or keilke is ...chopped and sauted separately cabbage,onion and bacon.Mix and Enjoy.The Best.

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  33. my kids and their father put strawberry jam on them with the sauce. i just cant see that it would b good. at least my frozen strawberry jam gets used

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  34. In my family we bake them after boiling. We bake them with butter, cottage cheese and sour cream,

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  35. My maternal Grandmother was a Mennonite. She made them with cottage cheese and my grand father ate them boiled with hot cream, butter and salt and pepper. As kids she would fry them, after boiling, and we ate them with sorghum syrup. OMG. 50 years later I eat them with maple syrup. OH YUM. Hard to find Sorghum in the US

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  36. Wareneki has been a favourite meal for me since I was a child growing up with Mennonite heritage. When I got married my Scottish husband learned to love them just as much as I, and our children and now our grandchildren are enthusiastic fans. One of our sons even learned to make them because his wife didn't know how and he wanted to satisfy that craving for the comfort food. I serve them with sour cream gravy topped with caramelized onions alongside farmer's sausage. My mother always served pickled beets on the side which is delicious because the tang of the beet pickles complements the smooth creaminess of the cottage cheese and gravy. In the fall my mother made at least one large batch of plum wareneki. Instead of cream gravy she would serve them with sweetened whipped cream. Haven't tasted any option that tasted better!! Though you can just top with sour cream sprinkled with sugar. I know that some folks say that all this fat in a meal is not healthy for you but I think that it is because of meals like this that Mennonite women have such soft and youthful looking skin!! :)

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