How to Make Cozonac Romanesc

Cozonac Romanesc

The Cozonac Romanesc or Christmas cake is traditional Romanian sweet bread and is usually prepared during special holidays like Easter, Christmas, New Year, and Pentecost. This sweet bread is added with milk, sugar, butter, raisins, and eggs to make it more tasty and filling. However, throughout the whole of Romania, the recipes differ. The different regions of Romania sometimes have different Cozonac recipes. This means that they differ in the filling or on the added ingredients to the dough, but the recipe for the dough itself remains constant throughout the country. However, there is always a standout or a more known recipe amongst the many other Cozonac recipes. So, here is the more known Cozonac recipe and an instruction on how to make Cozonac Romanesc.

Ingredients:

· 1 kg of wheat flour

· 4 pieces of whole eggs

· 4 egg yolks

· 4 egg whites

· 200 g of sugar

· 50 ml of rum

· 500 ml of milk

· 1 piece of lemon

· 1 piece of orange

· Vanilla

· 60 g of yeast

· 100 g of raisins

· 600 g of walnuts

· 10 g of salt

For the baking tins:

· 50 g of caster sugar

· 50 g of butter

Directions:

1. Prepare the dough. Mix well the 250 ml of milk and 2/3 kg of flour and then sprinkle it with flour while mixing. Leave the though to rise for 30 minutes. While the dough is still rising, mix the other 250 ml of milk, sugar, the whole eggs, the egg yolks, the grated rinds of lemon and orange, the salt, and the vanilla in a pot on a low heat.

2. Add the mixture to the dough after it has risen. Knead the dough. Add more flour when needed. Then, beat the egg whites until stiff and add it to the dough. Knead the dough again. When the dough is in a good enough state after kneading, add the butter and continue to knead again.

3. Add the filling to the dough by folding in the raisins, rum, and walnuts. The way you fold this creates the pattern of the final bread output. After that, cover it with warmed towel and let it rise in a warm place for a few more minutes.

4. Grease the bottom and sides of the loaf tins with the butter and then sprinkle some of the sugar to the greased parts.

5. Divide the dough into two once it is raised fully. Place each half on separate loaf tins and make sure that they only fill half of the tin. Let is rise to ¾ to the top of the tin before you spread butter on top of each loaf. Once done, sprinkle some more crushed sugar cubes on top of each loaf.

6. Set the stove in a low temperature of about 120 – 150 degrees Celsius. Place the tins inside the oven and then bake the bread until the top of the bread, now Cozonac, is a nice brown colour.

7. Remove from the oven. And your bread is done.

A Cozonac can have a variety of filling and therefore can have a variety of taste, but always remember this: in cooking, there is no definite way on doing things; there are just standards or guides. You can experiment on the ingredients you will use and the kind of taste that you want to deliver.