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.

Hello World!

Why did I decide to write this blog? I mean there are already so many out there, what could this one bring new under the sun of the Internet? Simple, because I need a place where I can write down my daily epiphanies! Imagine how exciting my life is if I get more than one of those per day even! Basically is like having each time a multiple orgasm :D

I need a place where I can write a brief Theory of Everything to unify all the braches of Physics (have to get this out of my system), how is advancing the construction of my "time travel device", if the soup was too salty last night and other equally important stuff.

Or maybe I just like to talk a lot and since I already tired all my friends I decided to torture this blog who cannot say "you know what, I just remember I have a casserole in the oven, got to go!"

Anyhow, the things you'll find here fall in one of the following categories:

- music: I like music a lot so I'll write about what bands I have discovered recently, what concerts I attended etc. Probably it will be a lot of rock (yeah baby, loud music with growling voices) especially when I talk about concerts.

- programming and science: I'm afraid I cannot deny my real nerdy nature! I've tried to do so all my teenager years, but it was always thrown right into my face so I ended up accepting it. I will try to keep this part at the minimum though since the current blog is mainly for outside working hours revelations!

- cats: I adore cats (most probably I am a cat lady in denial). I even have one cat, Missan. She was a bit broken for the last few months 'cause she was crappin’ the entire house. Now she is better and I am the proud possessor of countless cat behavior books. Therefore lots of information to pass on other frustrated cat lovers. I will also include some tips on how to take care of a cat (a sort of "puss tutorial") just in case someone interested will ever read this.

- cooking: I like good food and I don't live with my mother anymore. So I have to cook it myself! I'll also share some recepies for the other gourmands out there.

- shopping: yes, I am a shopaholic!

- cocktails: and I like drinking as well...

- books: sometimes I accidentally read a good book and I feel the need to share the good news with the humanity. Sometimes I read a crappy book and then I feel the need of publicly condemn it and curse to author for making me spend hours of my life!

- other stuff that are catching my attention

And that would be it for the moment because I got bored of writing…