Call it what you like the best. I call it kakaós csiga, and I like it how my mom made it, following the recipe of F. Big Angela, how we call her... 🙂 You can make it from puff pastry, blundel dough (between yeast dough and puff pastry) or simply from yeast dough. That is how I make it, so I am going to write this recipe. Next time, I am going to try from my sourdough, and see what is going to happen.

I only have very good memories, if I think of kakaós csiga. We mostly made it, when the weather started to be as they call it, autumnal. Cold, rainy and foggy. That is when my mom said: now it is time for kakaós csiga. Agreed! But since I live in Scandinavia, it can basically happen any day of the year that I feel like making it, so it became an 'all year round' cake. But here you are, the first of December, so it is time to make it, and you better do, because it is simply delicious.

They say, it is hungarian. Well, they say everything is hungarian. You can never be sure, if  a cake is realated to this or that nationality. These types of rolls where really popular, especially in the 19th century, all around Europe. Hungarian confectionary was highly influenced by Austrians, Turks, Jews, Gypsies, and basically by all the Balkan, and by everyone who entered Europe from the East. Anyway, it is the most popular pastry in the country. And like most of the things, it is the best when you make it.

Basically the only thing, what you have to take care of is that the dough does not get cold. While leavening, put the dough into a warm place and do not open any windows. Work with room temperature ingredients. If they are not cold for your hands, the are not cold for the dough.

The ingredients

Use local ingredients, find a dairy farm, who can give you milk and butter. Use local flour, organic one if you can. Use free range eggs, maybe someone in your family has chickens? And please spend your money on fairtrade cocoa powder, you only need 3 tablespoons of it, and it feels better to use it. Think about the people who made it possible for you to bake this or an other cake. Think of the people who work to make you flour, oil, sugar, salt.  Think of the cows, who give your milk and butter. And the 22 chickens on one square meter, if you do not vote with buying free range, organic ones.

Pay for the ingredients real price. Cheap ingredients cost much more, but you are not the one, who is paying for it. But the farmers, the cute cows, and the funny chickens.

Kakaós csiga recipe

• 600 g flour
• 2 egg yolks
• 30 gramm yeast
• 2 tbsp oil (sunflower)
• 2 tbsp sugar
• 300 ml milk
• salt

Filling

• 100 gramm butter
• 3 tbsp cocoa
• 3 tbsp sugar

Spread

• 200 ml milk with vanilla sugar

 

Crush the yeast into some warm milk, add the lunchbox (some sugar), put it aside. Mix the flour, the salt and the sugar together in a big bowl. Use the kneading function of your mixer. Add the room temperature milk to it, then the now foamy yeast mixture, the room temperatue egg yolks. Knead it, until it separates from the bowl. Finally add the oil. Once the dough feels (try with your fingers) smooth and springy, cover and let it leaven, takes about an hour. It depends on a lot of things. When you make leaven dough, you involve yeast fungi, and you have no real power over them. So it depends on the ingredients (quality, age, temperature), your kneading technique, your yeast fungi, your patience, and surprisingly, your mood.

Bestrew your pastry board with flour, and roll the dough for around one centimeter thick. Grease the surface (use pastry brush) with the melted butter, and  bestrew with the sugar and cocoa. Roll it up, then slice into one centimeter thick pieces. Place them into a baking pan (use baking paper), and put it into the cold oven. Set it to 200 degrees, after 10 minutes reduce the temperature to 180. Before it is almost done, sprinkle each snail with (warm!) vanilla sugar milk, and give 5 more minutes to them in the oven. It takes about 35-40 minutes, but keep an eye on your cake!

Eat it when it is warm or cold, for breakfast, for dinner with a glass of milk or in the afternoon. Anytime, anywhere with anyone.