Oblande (sitni kolači)

The story

Small cookies made ahead for the slava and Christmas table—among them oblande, wafer sheets layered with a chocolate-walnut cream and cut into small squares, with no oven needed—belong to a wider Balkan and Central European tradition of baking dozens of small, assorted sweets in the weeks before a major holiday—each kind with a different shape, filling, or glaze, much like Czech cukroví or the Hungarian assortment of holiday cookies. Making several kinds at once is a practical answer to large slava and Christmas celebrations where many guests are expected: a full, varied plate of sweets looks more welcoming and more festive than one big cake. In many Serbian families the baking is a job for several generations at once, with the grandmother in charge of the recipes and the granddaughters learning to shape and decorate. For Serbian families in the diaspora, a plate of assorted small cookies on the slava table is one of the most direct signs of hospitality—part of the rule that a guest must never leave hungry.