Cozonac

Christmas time !! A time for cold weather, snow, Christmas tree, joy, carols, gifts and family !! And of course time for cooking !!

This is a traditional Romanian sweet that we do every Easter and every Christmas and it is called COZONAC !!!

This is the recipe:

What you need:

1 kg flour
2 envelops dry yest
250 g sugar (or more if you want it more sweet)
500 ml milk
200 g melted butter
5 yolks
1 teaspoon lemon zest
pinch of salt
2 rummy essences
4 envelops vanilla sugar

For the nuts filling (you can increase the quantities if you want more filling! me, I personally like it with more cocoa and more nuts, so I add more that what it says in the original recipe)

250 g grounded nuts
4 tablespoons milk
5 tablespoons sugar
2 rummy essences
1 tablespoon cocoa

For the raisins filling:

raisins
brown sugar (as much as you want)
cocoa (optional)

For greasing the cozonaci:

1 raw yolk
30 ml milk

How to do it:

We put in a medium bowl the grounded nuts, the sugar, the rummy essences, the milk (the 4 tablespoons) and we mix until combined.
The raisins we put them in a bowl with water (to go over them) and we let them soak for 30-40 min and then we let them drain.
In another bowl we put the warm milk together with the sugar and the vanilla sugar until everything is dissolved.
The “maia” we make by doing the following: in a bowl we mix one handful of flour (not too much), the yest sachets and a few spoons of the sugary- vanilla milk. We mix until we get a paste consistency and we let it grow and get puffy in a warm space for about 15-20 minutes.
In another bowl we put the egg yolks with a pinch of salt and the lemon zest and we mix.
In a BIG bowl we put the flour, the “maia” which in the meantime grew, the yolks, the sugary-vanilla milk and the rummy essences. We mix everything together very good and the slowly we start adding some melted butter. Attention !! do not pour all the butter at once, you have to add it little by little, all the time mixing the butter in the composition.
After all the butter was incorporated we have to mix and mix and mix. Mixing is the main secret to making a good cozonac. The elders say that you have to mix a cozonac from half an hour to one hour….but who has so much power in their hands? Me I just do it for about 10 minutes, just so that I see all the ingredients are well incorporated.
After everything is mixed very well for about 10-15 min, we sprinkle with some flour and cover with a dry, clean towel and leave in a warm spot for about 1 and half hours or 2 to grow.
After the mixture grew, we divide it in 2. Each half we then divided in 2 also. So in total you have 4 equal balls.
You take the first ball and you roll in with a pin. You then sprinkle half of the coca-nut mixture and roll the whole thing.
Do the same with the other half. Then take both rolls and make the into a kind of braid.
Repeat the procedure for the raisin mixture.
The cover the cozonac tray with baking paper and we put the cozonac inside. If you do not have a tray that resembles this tray, you can just put both cozonaci in a normal baking pan. Just be careful there is no empty space in between them or around them. They have to fit exactly in the pan.
After we put them in the pan, we cover them with a towel and we let them grow some more for about 30 min (no fire)
After we grease them with a mixed egg yolk and some milk and we sprinkle some brown sugar on top. We bake them in the oven for about 40-45 minutes. After you take them out and cover them with a towel.