Slovene Cuisine #9: Potica

This is an authentic Slovenian cake recipe which dates back to the Middle Ages. It is traditionally served at weddings, at Easter and of course at Christmas, which makes it the perfect festive recipe to share with you today. It can be made with a variety of fillings, the most popular and traditional being walnuts or poppy seeds. The recipe below is for walnut-filled potica, which is probably my favourite.

Ingredients

For the dough:

• 600g plain flour
• 30g yeast
• 200ml milk
• 140g sugar
• 140g butter
• 4 egg yolks
• 1 tsp vanilla sugar
• grated rind of one lemon

For the filling:

• 400g ground walnuts
• 200ml single cream
• 250g sugar
• 2 tbsp rum
• 2-3 egg whites

Method:

• First, prepare the yeast; mix the yeast with a teaspoon of sugar, a teaspoon of flour and a few tablespoons of milk, and leave to rise. If using powdered yeast, one small sachet should be enough for this recipe: simply add to the flour before mixing.
• To make the filling, mix together the walnuts and sugar, and stir the rum into the cream. Combine the walnut mixture with the rum mixture. Beat the eggs whites to a foam then fold into the walnut mixture until well-combined and thickened.
• To make the dough, combine all of the dough ingredients except for the lemon rind and mix to form a thick cookie-like dough.
• Turn the dough out onto a floured work surface and roll out to a thin sheet, then coat with the walnut filling and sprinkle with grated lemon rind.
• Roll the mixture together then place in a greased baking tin: you can use a round tin with a hole in the centre, or divide the mixture in two and place in a large rectangular tin.
• Cover the mixture and leave to rise for at least six hours but preferably overnight.
• Bake at 180c/fan 160c/gas mark 5 for 1-1/2 hours depending on the type of tin you are using.
• Leave to cool in the tin then turn out onto a cloth, cover and leave to cool completely. Once cool sprinkle with icing sugar and serve. Keeps well in an airtight container for up to 5 days.

Recipe translated from Kulinarika.net.

If you decide to make potica this holiday season, let me know how it turned out! I will be buying one as I already have my traditional British Christmas Cake to make. Maybe next year I’ll be brave enough to tackle this recipe…

Dober tek!
Ingrid