Lekvar substitute

Best substitute

Homemade prune butter

Use the same amount as the lekvar you are replacing

Best for kolache and kolacky

Close match

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.

Other lekvar substitutes

Ranked, with the exact amount to use

2Apple butter
Different taste
Use the same amount
Structurally almost identical: dark, thick, low in sugar and spreadable rather than runny.
What changes
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.
3Plum or damson jam, reduced
Close match
reduce 1 cup jam to about ⅔ cup, then use 1:1
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.
What changes
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.
4Plum jam blended with prunes
Close match
½ cup jam blitzed with 6 soft pitted prunes, used 1:1
The quickest good answer.
What changes
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.
5Fig jam thickened with ground nuts or breadcrumbs
Different taste
½ cup jam plus 1 tbsp fine dry breadcrumbs or ground walnuts, rested 10 minutes
Not plum, but the deep dried-fruit character sits in the same family, and the crumb or ground nut soaks up the free liquid so the filling stays put in the oven.
What changes
Slightly grainier than lekvar and with the fig seeds noticeable.
Best for
kolache, filled cookies, strudel, cake fillings
Ground walnuts are the better thickener in a Central European pastry because the flavour belongs there anyway. Let it stand ten minutes so the crumb hydrates before you fill anything.
6Plum or damson jam straight from the jar
Taste and texture differ
Use the same amount
The honest least-bad option.
What changes
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.

What is Lekvar?

Lekvar is Lekvar, known as szilvalekvar in Hungary, povidl in Czech and powidla in Polish, is a very thick, dark, only lightly sweetened plum or prune butter cooked down for hours until it is stiff enough to hold its shape inside a pastry.

Cooking 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.

Frequently asked questions

What 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.

Related substitutes

More preserves substitutes

Lekvar substitute

Other lekvar substitutes

2Apple butter

3Plum or damson jam, reduced

4Plum jam blended with prunes

5Fig jam thickened with ground nuts or breadcrumbs

6Plum or damson jam straight from the jar