Mucenici - Moldavian Pastries Filled With Walnuts

In a bowl, pour 125ml warm milk and 125ml warm water. Add in 1 tbsp sugar and 25g fresh yeast, stir well and let sit until foam starts to form.

By the way, you can make the dough in the breadmaker - find the directions in the traditional Moldavian mucenici recipe.

Add in 1 egg, 80g melted and cooled butter, 150g sugar, vanilla extract, 1 tsp salt, mix well.

Mix in 500g flour, stir with a spatula. If you notice the dough is too soft and sticky, add some more flour little by little.

Continue kneading with your hands on a work space. This way, you can feel the texture better and you have enough space to work on.

The dough is supposed to be firm and not sticky. If it's not, add a little more flour and knead until it is so.

When it's ready, return dough to the bowl, cover with a kitchen towel and let rise for 1 hour at room temperature.

While dough is resting, you have time to prepare the walnut filling.

Place in a bowl the chopped walnuts (in the food processor or with the blender), add 200g sugar, 1 tbsp cocoa, 1 tsp cinnamon, 0.5 tsp salt and stir well.

Pour over 100ml cold milk and mix everything with a spoon.

The mixture should be slightly moist, a bit gluey and not too runny!

Divide the risen dough into 2 equal parts and shape into balls.

Let rest on the table for 10 minutes.

In turn, with the rolling pin, roll out each ball into a large sheet, 36cm wide and 50cm long.

Dust the table with flour if needed while rolling it out, to make the sheet smooth and elastic.

Then cut into 6 strips, 6cm wide and 50cm long.

In other words, we will divide the 36 (the width) by 6. You can use a ruler or a measuring tape for more accuracy. This way, at the end, you will have perfect and even mucenici.

Spoon out the walnut mixture onto each strip of dough, use a teaspoon for this. Try to stick only in the middle, without touching the edges.

Then pinch the edges up and together to seal.

Turn this roll seam side down, work it a bit with your hands to make it evenly thick.

Shape this roll into an 8, the classic mucenici shape. Hide the ends in the middle, underneath the place where the 2 circles meet.

Repeat the procedure for all the mucenici, transfer to a baking sheet lined with parchment and let rise for 20-30 minutes.

Then brush the tops with raw egg yolk (can be mixed with 1-2 tbsp milk) and bake in the preheated oven to 180 degrees C for 20-25 minutes.

Right after you remove from the oven and while they are still very hot, you can drizzle with sugar syrup. When they cool down, the syrup will crystallise and turn into a sort of icing, but it's possible that the mucenici will be sticky. Feel free to try and see if you like it.

For the syrup: boil 100ml water and 75g sugar for 1-2 minutes in a small pot - you can add also vanilla and rum flavours.

While the syrup hasn't turned into icing yet, you can sprinkle with ground walnut on top.

It needs to be finely ground in order to stick properly.

Let cool for at least 1-2 hours before serving, allow the icing to harden. 

Warm or cold, they are delicious and wonderful!

Enjoy!