If you want to eat a tasteful, soft and mellow cottage cheese pie, you have to make your own cake. Store-bought pie usually fall short of expectations, in order to avoid disappointment you’d better go into action.

Making túrós pite doesn’t require considerable effort, preparation and baking take about an hour. It’s a simple, but versatile cake: it can be eaten as a celebratory dessert, a breakfast snack, or a teatime treat.

The filling is not too sweet, I add only 100 g of sugar to one kilogram of cottage cheese because the aim is to have a fresh and sourish flavour. You can increase the amount of sugar if you don’t dust the top of the pie with powdered sugar, or you can add raisins: they give the filling sweetness, too.

Ingredients:

For the dough:

• 500 g (~4 cups) flour
• 250 g (~1 cup) butter
• 200 g (~1 cup) sugar
• 2 egg yolks
• pinch of salt
• 15 g (~1 1/3 tbsp) baking powder
• 1-2 tbsp sour cream

For the filling:

• 1 kg (~2 1/4 lbs) cottage cheese
• 100 g (~3/4 cup) powdered sugar
• zest of a lemon
• 2 egg yolks
• 2 tbsp sour cream
• 40 g (~1/4 cup) vanilla pudding powder
• 4 egg whites

Size of the baking pan: 30×33 cm / 12×13 inch

Start with making the dough. Rub butter into the flour, then add the remaining ingredients. Knead until smooth and pliable. Cover the dough and put into the fridge.

Whisk egg whites until stiff peaks form. In a large bowl mix cottage cheese, powdered sugar, lemon zest, egg yolks, sour cream and pudding powder together. Gently fold egg whites into the filling.

Thoroughly grease a baking pan. Preheat the oven to 170°C / 338°F.

Form the dough into two balls: 40% for the top crust and 60% for the bottom. Roll out the bigger dough into a rectangle and  fit it into the bottom of your baking pan and up the sides. Spread the filling evenly on the dough. Roll out the other dough ball and cover the filling. Use a fork to poke holes in dough, so it doesn’t develop bubbles when it bakes. Bake for 30-40 minutes.

Let the cake completely cool before cutting into squares. Feel free to dust it with powdered sugar.