Lekvar substitutes
Lekvar substitutes — 6 options, ranked, with the exact amount
Use Homemade prune butter
Same amount as the lekvar
Simmer 300g pitted prunes with 200ml water for 15 minutes until completely soft, blend smooth, then return to the pan and cook until thick and glossy. Deep, dark and barely sweet, with the same slightly savoury caramel depth as real lekvar and no added pectin needed.
Make prune butter: simmer 300g of pitted prunes in 200ml of water for 15 minutes, blitz smooth, then cook it down another 5 to 10 minutes until a spoon dragged through leaves a channel that stays open. That is a genuine 1:1 replacement in 25 minutes. Apple butter is the easiest jar to buy and swaps 1:1. Ordinary plum jam is the wrong swap unless you reduce it first, because lekvar's job is to be stiff and only mildly sweet, and jam is neither.
- Verdict —
- Works
- Best for —
- kolache and kolacky
Updated 19 Aug 2026 · no sponsored swaps
Every option, one card
Ranked| # | Substitute | Instead of lekvar | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Homemade prune butterkolache and kolacky | Same amountWorks | Works |
| 2 | Apple butterkolache | Same amountTweak it | Tweak it |
| 3 | Plum or damson jam, reducedkolache | Same amountReduce 1 cup jam to about 2/3 cupWorks | Works |
| 4 | Plum jam blended with pruneskolache | Same amount½ cup jam blitzed with 6 soft pitted prunesWorks | Works |
| 5 | Fig jam thickened with ground nuts or breadcrumbskolache | ½ cup jam plus 1 tbsp fine dry breadcrumbs or ground walnuts, rested 10 minutesTweak it | Tweak it |
| 6 | Plum or damson jam straight from the jaremergencies | Same amountYou'll taste it | You'll taste it |
Homemade prune butter
similar taste and texture
Simmer 300g pitted prunes with 200ml water for 15 minutes until completely soft, blend smooth, then return to the pan and cook until thick and glossy. Deep, dark and barely sweet, with the same slightly savoury caramel depth as real lekvar and no added pectin needed.
- Best for
- kolache and kolacky, hamantaschen, palacsinta and crepe fillings, strudel and buchty
The closest thing to real lekvar you can make quickly, and it holds in pastry well. Add a squeeze of lemon and a pinch of salt at the end. Sweeten only if it tastes flat; prunes are sweet already.
Apple butter
different taste, similar texture
Structurally almost identical: dark, thick, low in sugar and spreadable rather than runny. It tastes of apple and warm spice instead of plum, so a kolache made with it is a little sweeter and distinctly cinnamon-scented, but it behaves in the oven exactly as lekvar does.
- Best for
- kolache, hamantaschen, filled cookies, spreading
The best jar to buy if you cannot find lekvar. Check the label: some American apple butters are heavily spiced, which is charming in a kolache and wrong in a hamantaschen.
Plum or damson jam, reduced
similar taste and texture
Simmering jam down fixes both problems with it at once: it thickens enough to stay put in a pastry, and the concentration makes it read less sweet against its own fruit acidity. Still brighter and jammier than lekvar's long-cooked depth.
- Best for
- kolache, hamantaschen, thumbprint cookies, layer cakes
Cool it completely before filling, because hot jam soaks into raw pastry. Damson jam gets you closer than sweet plum jam because it is already tart.
Plum jam blended with prunes
similar taste and texture
The quickest good answer. The prunes thicken the jam and dilute its sugar, and they push the flavour towards the dried, deeper plum note lekvar has. Comes out very close in both stiffness and sweetness with about three minutes of work.
- Best for
- kolache, hamantaschen, filled buns, crepes
Soak the prunes in hot water for ten minutes first if they are dry. Blitz thoroughly; small chunks of prune tear delicate pastry.
Fig jam thickened with ground nuts or breadcrumbs
different taste, similar texture
Plum or damson jam straight from the jar
different taste and texture
The honest least-bad option. Expect it to boil, run out of the pastry and caramelise on the baking tray, and expect the finished pastry to taste distinctly sweeter than it should. The flavour is in the right family; the behaviour is not.
- Best for
- emergencies, closed pastries such as buchty, crepe fillings, cake layers
If you must, chill the filled pastries hard for 20 to 30 minutes before baking to slow the spread, use noticeably less filling than the recipe says, and take a tablespoon of sugar out of the dough.
Questions
5 questionsWhat is the best substitute for lekvar?
Prune butter you make yourself, which takes about 25 minutes: simmer pitted prunes in water until soft, blend, then cook down until stiff. It matches lekvar on colour, stiffness and the low sweetness that makes lekvar different from jam. If you would rather buy something, apple butter is the closest jar on a supermarket shelf and swaps one for one.
Is lekvar the same as plum jam?
No, and treating them as the same is why so many kolache leak. Lekvar is cooked for hours until it is a dense, spreadable butter with modest sugar, so it holds its shape at oven temperature. Plum jam is set with pectin and much sweeter, and it liquefies in the oven and runs. Reducing jam by about a third fixes both problems.
Can I just leave the lekvar out of the recipe?
Not in a filled pastry, because it is the filling and there is nothing left without it. What you can do is swap in another traditional filling: poppy seed, walnut, sweetened farmer's cheese and apricot are all standard in the same kolache and hamantaschen doughs, so pick one you can actually make rather than trying to bake the pastry empty.
Is lekvar the same thing as povidl or powidla?
Effectively yes. Lekvar is the Hungarian and Slovak name, povidl is Czech, powidla is Polish, and szilvalekvar specifies the plum version. All describe the same long-cooked, thick, barely sweetened plum butter, and any recipe calling for one of these names will accept any of the others without adjustment.
Where can I buy lekvar?
Hungarian, Slovak, Czech and Polish grocers stock it, and it appears in some American supermarkets in jars near the pie fillings, often labelled prune lekvar or prune butter. If you cannot find it, prune butter made from a bag of prunes is a genuine equivalent rather than a workaround, and apple butter is the easiest ready substitute.
Tips for substituting lekvar
6 tips- Lekvar is far less sweet than jam, and this is the single most important thing to get right. If you substitute jam, take a tablespoon or two of sugar out of the dough as well, or the whole pastry tips over into cloying and the fruit stops tasting like fruit.
- Use the spoon test to judge stiffness. Drag a spoon through the filling: if the channel stays open, it will hold in the oven, and if it closes up behind the spoon, it will run out of your kolache. Keep cooking until it holds.
- Chill filled hamantaschen and kolache for 20 to 30 minutes before baking. Cold filling spreads far less, and this one step rescues almost any slightly loose substitute.
- A squeeze of lemon juice and a small pinch of salt wake up any long-cooked fruit filling. Prune and plum butter both go flat and sludgy without acid, and adding it at the end rather than at the start keeps it bright.
- For palacsinta, Hungarian pancakes, lekvar is used thinner than it is in pastry. Loosen it with a teaspoon of hot water, or of slivovitz if you have it, until it spreads without tearing the pancake.
- Traditional lekvar contains no added pectin and often very little sugar, which is exactly why it does not keep like jam. Refrigerate any homemade version and use it within about two weeks, and do not adapt it into a water-bath canning recipe, since preserving safety depends on the tested balance of sugar and acid. Check the National Center for Home Food Preservation before canning fruit butters.