Roxakia

Ingredients:

400 grams all purpose flour

120 grams of vegetable oil

3 tablespoons cocoa (or alternatively 2 tablespoons cocoa, 1 teaspoon cinnamon and 1/2 teaspoon clove powder)

2 tablespoons grated walnuts

2 teaspoons baking powder

Vanilla extract to taste

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon lemon zest from unwaxed lemons

1 sachet of yeast

120 grams of milk

 2 eggs

For the syrup

500 grams of water

500 grams of sugar

Peel of a lemon

Method:

1. Dissolve the yeast in a cup of warm milk.

2. In a large bowl, beat the eggs and then add the vegetable oil and baking powder followed by the milk when they are thoroughly combined.

3. Then add the flour to the bowl with the liquid ingredients, but do so in small portions to avoid lumps. Mix until you have a uniform dough at the end.

Here are two options:

Option 1:

a. Divide our dough into three equal parts.

b. Take one part and add the cocoa and nuts (cinnamon and cloves if we decide to include them) and three tablespoons of milk (because we add other solid ingredients, we will need this extra milk).

c. Knead well so that our dough is thoroughly mixed  and divide it in two.

d. Then we take a white piece of dough and open it in a long narrow strip.

e. Shape one chocolate dough like a long sausage, equal to the length of the white.

f. Place the chocolate dough in the middle of the white dough and wrap it around to cover it. Alternatively, we can roll out the chocolate dough like a wide strip and place it on top and wrap it to form a spiral.

g. We continue the same process for the second dough (if we want, we can make one as a spiral and the other as a classic roll).

h. Then, cut our rolls to a thickness of 2 cm and place them in the baking tray.

Option 2:

a. Divide our dough into two equal pieces.

b. We leave one white where the base will be and in the second we add our spices, cocoa, walnuts and milk.

c. After making a homogenized chocolate dough, we open it in a wide strip or like a long sausage.

d. We place on the base the white and the chocolate from above, with the desired design, classic rocket or spiral.

e. After joining the two doughs, we will cut our rolls to a width of 1 cm. Here we only have one stick, not two, as in Option 1, so the slices we will cut should be a little thinner.

NB: In both options the idea is to get a roll of cookie dough that you take slices from to make the individual roxakia. Play with the different doughs to make different designs, have fun!

4. Whichever option or design you choose, bake the roxakia in a preheated oven at 180 degrees C for 20-25 minutes.

Then we make the syrup.

5. Put the water, sugar and lemon peel/zest in a saucepan over medium-high heat.

6.  Once the syrup starts to boil, count exactly 10 minutes, remove from the heat and set aside.

7. Once our rolls are cooked, we put them in a slightly deeper pan with walls.

8. Then, with the help of a tablespoon, pour the syrup over our rolls.

9. It may seem like a lot of syrup but that's the way to make the right amount of syrup for this lovely treat.

10. Once we pour the syrup over the roxakia we turn them over every 5 minutes or so until they have soaked up all the syrup up equally.