Turkish Delight Brioche

      I decided to post from time to time some of the recipes I cook. I'll start with some brioche I made last night, which have a flavor and texture very similar to a popular Romanian sweet bread called cozonac. I took the recipe from my favorite cooking blog Bunatati din Bucataria Mea (trad. Goodies from my Kitchen). By the way, I warmly recommend the blog to all the gourmands out there (you must know Romanian however in order to understand the recipes). What I particularly like about this recipe is its simplicity compared to the traditional cozonac recipe and the great results it provides (also, the house will smell heavenly while you have these in the oven ;) ). Plus, I think is a great way of using Turkish delight which eaten by its own is way to sweet for my taste. For people allergic to baking powder this is a nice alternative to muffins because it uses yeast.

      So here we go (original recipe here):


- 600 g flour
- 150 g crystal sugar
- 250 mL milk
- 1 envelope of orange zest (I guess you can also zest one large bio-orange)
- 3 eggs + 2 egg yolks
- 125 g soft butter (I melted mine and it was fine, as long as it is not too warm)
- a pinch of salt
- 1 envelope dried yeast - one handful dried raisins (I kept mine in dark rum for a better flavor)
- one or two handful of colored Turkish delight

      Melt the yeast in the lukewarm milk. Beat the eggs and yolks together, mix them with the milk and yeast, add the remaining ingredients(sugar, salt, butter, flour, orange zest, dried raisins and Turkish delight) mixing the dough until it becomes homogenous and the raisins and Turkish delight are more or less homogeneously distributed.
      Cover the bowl and leave the dough to raise in a warm place for about 20 min.
      Distribute the dough in 12 muffin shapes lined with baking paper and leave them to raise for another 20 min. If you feel like, you can decorate the top with a bit of crystal sugar, or roughly chopped walnuts.
       Put them in the preheat oven at 180 °C and bake them for 20-25 min.

      I eat them for breakfast with coffee or tea. They're nice to take at work as well...

Note: Because they can get dry quite fast, I froze half of the brioche (6 pieces) as soon as they got cold enough. I am not sure what effect will this have on the texture (remains to be seen) but I plan to unfreeze them one or two at a time before eating them. My plan is to wrap them in aluminum foil (so they don't get dry in the oven) while still frozen and keep them for few minutes (5-10 min) in the preheated oven at 180 °C.