"Dad, can you make the cake that grandma makes?” asks my older son, “which one?” I answered, though I knew exactly which cake he meant “grandma makes a lot of cakes”. “The tasty one, the one that looks like a screw with chocolate”. I called mom “this cake?” mom said “that's easy: you take about 3-4 cups of flour, a cube of yeast, a little bit of milk maybe a half of glass, sugar…”. I already got used mom’s recipes measurements, but after the yeast I stopped listening. When she was done, I asked “any way to do it without yeast?” At that time, yeast was the rubicon that I hadn’t yet crossed. It's not that I didn’t try, I did, but somehow I never succeed. “It isn’t the same with no yeast” mom said, “and anyway, yeast is not a problem, you just need patience”, and with a motherly patience she again explained the recipe to me.
Ingredients
1 TBS dry yeast
¼ cup warm milk
1 TBS sugar
4 cups flour
½ cup sugar
2 eggs
1 stick butter
1 TBS vanilla sugar
½ cup milk
½ tsp salt
Filling
1 ½ sticks butter
½ cup cocoa powder
1 ½ cups sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
In a small bowl mix yeast, a tablespoon of sugar and ¼ cup warm milk. Let stand about 5 minutes until small bubbles are formed.
Place flour and yeast mix in a mixer bowl with kneading hook and stir. Add all dough ingredients and knead 7-8 minutes. Place dough in an oiled bowl, cover with plastic wrap and let rise for about two hours until dough is doubled.
Heat oven to 350 f. Mix all filling ingredients in a bowl. Divide dough into two parts. Roll each part to a 16X10 inch rectangle and ⅛ of an inch thick. Spread half of the filling on each rectangle. Roll each rectangle from the wide side to a tight roll. With a sharp knife cut each roll lengthwise, place the two straps side by side with the inner side facing up and form a braid from each two straps. Line parchment paper in two bread loaf pans. Place a cake in each one, cover with plastic wrap and let rise for 30 minutes. Brush each cake with beaten egg and bake for 40 minutes until cake is brown.
