Recipe for Cozonac – Romanian sweet bread for Christmas or Easter

Either you visited Romania, either you lived here for a while, you might remember a traditional sweet bread with walnut and raisins, called Cozonac. I always like to bake it on Christmas and Easter (along with sarmale stuffed cabbage rolls) and nowadays it’s quite easy to make if you have a good mixer and follow the below steps.

Very important: All the ingredients (with the exception of milk) and the cozonac trays are taken out from the pantry/fridge and brought to the kitchen at least 12 hours before you start making  cozonac. Eg if you want to make them in the morning, put everything on the table from evening kitchen): flour, eggs, butter, yeast, sugar, walnut, cocoa, flavors.

In the recipe for cozonac, the total ingredients for 2 fluffy cozonac cakes that you need to buy are : 1 kg of flour, 4 sachets of dry yeast, 600 ml of milk, 180 g of butter, salt, 6 eggs, 5 sachets of vanilla sugar, orange/lime essence, 1 untreated lemon and/or an orange (we only use the peel), 400 g of sugar. Depending on how you like the filling, add walnuts (400g), cocoa (3 tablespoons), raisins (200g), 1 rum essence.

Ingredients for cozonac dough

– 1 kg of flour

– 4 sachets of Dr Oetker dry yeast

– 500 ml warm milk (not hot)

– 300 g of sugar

– 150 g butter at room temperature, cut into cubes

– a pinch of salt

– 5 egg yolks

– 4 sachets of vanilla sugar

– orange/lemon/vanilla essence

– orange/lemon peel

Ingredients for any type of filling:

– 100 g powdered sugar

– 5 egg whites

To the above we will add, according to preferences:

– 400 g walnuts

– 3 spoons of cocoa

– raisins + rum essence

For greasing the cozonac:

-1 egg

-50 g of butter

How do you make cozonac aka Romanian sweet bread?

Step 1: Heat the milk.

Step 2: Prepare the maia. I always thought it was a complicated thing, but in fact it is as easy as possible. Put the yeast, 3 spoons of flour, half a spoon of sugar and 15 spoons of warm milk in a bowl or a bigger cup. We mix several times until we get the consistency of pancake batter, cover with a plastic film and leave in a warm place for 15 minutes until it rises about 5 times.

Step 3: Put the 300 g of sugar in the warm milk and stir to dissolve. Let’s leave it aside.

Step 4: Prepare the bowl of the mixer in which we will knead the dough or a larger bowl, if mixing by hand. We sift the flour directly over the bowl, add the raised maia and the egg yolks. Put the dough hook in the mixer and mix at low speed. We start to pour the warm milk little by little. We increase the speed of the mixer to medium speed (for me it is 3 out of 6). Add a little salt and the cubes of soft butter gradually. Now we put the flavorings in the cake: vanilla sugar, the essences you like and the grated orange/lemon peel. Let everything mix for another 15 minutes at medium speed and it’s done! If you knead by hand, continue for 30 minutes.

Step 5: Leave the dough in the mixer bowl, cover it with a foil or a towel and let it rise until it doubles in volume (usually it happens in about an hour in the heat). I mix it with a fork to get the air out and mix it for another 10 minutes in the robot. We cover it again and let it double its volume again.

Step 6: After 2 hours we start the filling. In a bowl, mix the remaining egg whites with sugar and whatever else you like (walnuts, raisins, cocoa or all). I like only egg whites + sugar + walnut. Alex also likes it with cocoa, and the girl with raisins. Attention, wash the raisins with warm water and leave them to soak for 10 minutes in warm water with a little rum essence. Squeeze the water out of them and then add them to the filling.

Step 7: Take out half of the dough and spread a rectangular sheet on a baking sheet with your hands, on which you will put the filling you like. From one end you start to run it. Then put the whole baking sheet in the baking tray. Leave the dough in the tray covered with foil or a towel until it doubles in volume (about another hour).

We do the same with the other half of the dough.

Step 8: After 1 hour, turn on the oven. Beat an egg and brush cozonac cakes on top.

Step 9: On the lowest grid of the preheated stove, we will leave the cakes to bake for 50 minutes at 185 degrees, with heat coming only from below. I don’t know what electric stove you have, but you can certainly do this setting. For the gas one, set to medium temperature.

Step 10: When we take them out, quickly brush them with a piece of butter so that they remain tender for as long as possible, but don’t worry, they are eaten quickly.

If you followed my recipe for cozonac, now you have 2 delicious Romanian traditional sweet breads on the table.

Pofta buna and Happy Holidays wherever you are!