Hello and welcome to the next installment of recipes from the fine cuisine of Romania in particular and Central-Eastern Europe in general, because, as I said before, I doubt anyone knows where these recipes originated, despite many claiming them. Today we have cozonac, which is a traditional desert. It is mostly made for Christmas and Easter, although it does not have strict religious associations, more like feast day associations. I have the recipe and some pictures, which I will use. The results in this case – the pictures – are not the best ever, but we use what we have. This is to do with the fact that my mom usually makes these in the family, but this time I helped. And such are the results.

Cozonac is basically a pastry like a sweet bread (not to be confused with lymphatic glands) with various fillings. In this day and age, the usual fillings are cocoa/chocolate, walnut or rahat (Turkish delight), or any combination of them. And a bunch more things to be honest. In this case, we used a mix of walnut and cocoa, although I am not sure one can source walnuts in the savage lands of the Americas.

The way my mom usually does it is as follows. To start things off, add 150 g fresh yeast in a little warm milk, a teaspoon of sugar and a few tablespoons of flour and let it activate, should double in volume pretty fast.

For the pastry, you will need: 6 egg yolks; 1 kg white flour, some high protein one like 12% or better is preferred, sifted; 400 ml milk, 100 ml sour cream, 250 g sugar; 150 g of lard, 100 g of oil; the lard melted over low heat. Any fat can be used, butter or just oil. Lemon zest. And some extract of rum and vanilla, I don’t know if these are used in the US.

Mix the oil and lard in a pot and melt the lard.

Add the milk, egg, sour cream, and vanilla/rum extract to the flour and sugar and mix well to incorporate.

Add the yeast, mix in and then knead the dough. When the dough is homogenous, add the fat bit by bit while kneading. Usually knead for 15 minutes, adding 50 g of fat every 3 or so.  The dough should end up like a bread dough in consistency, and should form small bubbles. You can add a handful of raisins if that is your thing. I would not myself. Let this rest for about an hour so the yeast can do its thing.

Slightly oil a work surface and, for reasons unknown to me, take the dough out of the bowl and slam it a dozen times or so on the work surface.

For the filling you need the whites of the eggs, 500 g rough ground walnut, 3-4 tablespoons cocoa, 2-3 tablespoons of sugar, some more rum/vanilla extract. Foam the egg whites with a pinch of salt and incorporating the 2-3 tablespoons of sugar in the process. Split the whites in two parts. Half should be then mixed with 150 g of walnut and the 3 tablespoons of cocoa, the other half with just 150g of walnut. Add rum/vanilla to taste.

The dough in our case was split 40 40 20, give or take. At this point, there are two different techniques. One gets fluffier pastry, one gets more even filling distribution.

Use 40% to make a sheet of pastry, cover with a layer of walnut filling, sprinkle 100 g of dry ground walnut on top of it and roll.

 

Take a second 40% piece of dough and make two thinner and somewhat smaller sheets. Cover each with filling, roll and then braid together the two dough cylinders.

 

Place in a baking tray lined with parchment, of appropriate shape, and let rise 30 more minutes.

Take one more beaten egg and use as a wash, brush over the top of the cozonac. Bake at 165 C for 50 minutes or so. Here we use the poke it with a stick method to see it is done.

The final 20% dough is usually used to make cheese pastry. 200 g cream cheese mid with 100 g sour cream, 2 tablespoon sugar, 2 whole eggs, some resins. Mix well. In a round oven safe pot lined with parchment put dough on the bottom and sides to create a container for the filling and add the filling. Make a dough X on top and bake for 40 minutes at 165. C

For all of these some people add orange zest, or various spices. That is all to taste. We like it simpler and as such do not really add spices besides the vanilla and rum extract.

This is of course one of those things in which most families do it their way so there is no standard recipe. For a different example as to proportion of ingredients, I will end the post with an alternative recipe. This one makes a richer pastry, and it is famous, although I am not sure anyone actually does it this way. It comes from a writer and noted gourmand from the 1920s by the name Pastorel Teodoreanu.

 

For 400 grams of flour, which is the base of the thing, you use 20 egg yolks, 30 grams yeast, 30 ml rum, 125 ml milk, 65 g butter, 30 ml oil, 120 g sugar, vanilla. The filling is a mix of 150 g candied orange peel, 70 g raisins mixed together with 30 ml of rum. I am partial to the walnut filling, so I doubt I would like this very much.

Anyway, cozonac.