Daring Baker August: Coiled Treats

The August Daring Bakers' Challenge took us for a spin! Swathi of Zesty South Indian Kitchen taught us to make rolled pastries inspired by Kurtoskalacs, a traditional Hungarian wedding pastry. These tasty yeasted delights gave us lots to celebrate!

Alternatively, we were allowed to make the Spanish ensaïmada.


I chose to put a Filipino twist (pun!) on it and make the version of ensaïmada from my parents' homeland, ensaymada. While ensaïmada is a flat coil, ensaymada has height, like brioche (technically, it is brioche).


Here's the dough.


The dough is doubled ... maybe tripled because I got caught up catching up with shows on hulu while it proofed.


Cut the dough into quarters and slather on some butter! Ensaymada is actually cut into even smaller rolls, but ... the dough was so little, and I underestimated it, so I left it big. Little did I know!


Ay wah-LAH!


Pre-proofed.



Proofed after an hour. I was nervous to see they didn't grow much.


Ooh. They're gettin' kinda puffy.


Whoah, Nellie! Look at how fuzzy this photo is! And how pillowy those ensaymadas are! Shazam!


I love the magic of yeast.


I want to fill a bounce house with ensaymada and jump into it with my mouth open.

I haven't tried these yet, and I still need to take a beauty shot tomorrow after the sun comes up, but so far, I'm excited to try these. They're so soft, I could barely pick them up. I'm debating taking a taste now before bedtime. But . . . it's bedtime, and butter and sugar at bedtime are not my friends. I didn't have powdered sugar to zing over the top, so I foolishly thought I'd just pop the hot rolls top-down into a bowl of sugar--it didn't stick. It has never stuck in all the years I've foolishly tried this tactic. I should have pressed the proofed rolls into the sugar before baking them, but I didn't know at the time that I was out of powdered sugar.



You can see how my fellow DBers fared through our blogroll.