Diós-mákos (bejgli) (walnut or poppy-seed roll)
This is served first on Christmas Day and then eaten throughout the festive season and even for weeks after the New Year begins.
Ingredients:
for the dough:
1 kg flour
500 g unsalted butter
4 eggs
100 g sugar
200 ml milk
50 g of fresh yeast
a little sour cream
for the filling:
400 g of poppy seeds or 500 g of walnuts
550 g of sugar
4 handfuls of sultanas
the zest of 2 lemons
2 tablespoons of rum
some vanilla flavoured icing sugar
a little milk
Preparation: (Preparation should begin during the evening before this is baked.)
for the filling: Grind either 400 g of poppy seeds or chop the 500 g of walnuts, and put into a mixing bowl. Add the 200 g of sugar, the vanilla flavoured icing sugar, the rum, the sultanas and the zest of the lemon, and mix well. Pour boiling milk over this mixture and stir over a gentle heat while it thickens. Then leave it to cool.
for the dough: Let the yeast rise in luke-warm, sugary milk for a few hours. Mix the flour with the butter, the eggs and 10 g of sugar. Add the milk and yeast mixture and enough sour cream for the dough to be manageable. Add a little salt and knead the dough well. Divide the dough into four parts and let each rest in a cool place until morning to let it rise.
In the morning, roll out each piece of dough with a rolling pin to the size of the baking tray to be used. Spread each of these evenly with one of the fillings; or spread two with poppy seeds and two with walnuts. Roll the dough and the pastry into a cylinder shape. Paint the tops with beaten egg yolk. Preferably leave these again for a while to let them rise again. Bake them in a preheated oven (about 50o C) until golden brown on the outside.
Cool these rolled cakes on a wire rack. Slice to serve.
