COZONAC- the Romanian traditional recipe

Virtual mobility 6th - 13th December 2021

ROMANIAN TRADITIONAL RECIPE
OF COZONAC WITH WALNUTS

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Cozonac is a traditional Romanian cake, but also a Bulgarian dessert (kozunak), similar to an Italian pastry called "panettone". Romanians usually eat this kind of cake at weddings, baptisms, Easter and Christmas.

Talking about the Romanian cake (that foreigners consider a sort of yeast bread) called COZONAC, there is a huge variety of recipes.
Every historical region has a recipe, just as every family has one, handed down from generation to generation. Almost every housewife has a recipe for traditional cozonac, inherited from family or taken from friends, neighbours or a colleague.

In terms of shape, cozonacii (plural of cozonac) can be straight or round, plain or plaited.

In terms of filling, we distinguish between plain or filled with walnut, poppy, dried fruit, or mixtures.

At Easter, the traditional cozonac is filled with cheese and this variety is called pască.

fresh cheese with eggs

Pasca

In Moldova, it is popular to prepare the round and tall (called "babe"), unfilled cakes, whose composition contains up to 20 eggs, butter, grated lemon or/and orange peel and raisins. In Ardeal they are mostly made with poppy seeds and a German-influenced version with burnt sugar, lots of butter and large chopped nuts.

PREPARATION TIME: 3 hours

COOKING TIME: 45-50 minutes

INGREDIENTS:

·        1 kg of sifted flour in order to obtain a fluffy pastry
·        50 g of fresh yeast or 14 g of dry yeast
·        350 ml (max. 400 ml) of warm milk
·        250 g of sugar
·        4 eggs
·        about 150 ml of sunflower oil and 100 g of melted butter
·        3 sachets of vanilla sugar or 2 teaspoons of vanilla extract or vanilla seeds
·        grated zest of 2 lemons and an orange
·        15 g salt (weighed!) or 1 teaspoon of salt