Hungarian fonotosh cake - I live in a village where the majority of the population is Hungarian. One of the Hungarian customs is that, when they have a wedding, they must also make a fontosh cake.
The wedding is usually on Saturday and the fontosh is made on Thursday, two days before the wedding. Several women gather and together in the cooperative bakery, they make 200-300 cakes, which depends on the size of the wedding. The dough is kneaded by a machine, and after that, they shape the cake by hand.
Afterwards, the fonotoš is transported by tractor, by gathering the youth (mostly friends of the future newlyweds). Then, they decorate the tractor trailer with crepe paper and various decorative ribbons and so all together, with the fontosh cakes in the trailer, they go around the village and distribute the cake to all the guests. The cake is also given to the person who is not invited to the wedding, but only gets to know the future newlyweds or their parents.
That's how I got a fontosh from acquaintances a couple of times, even though I wasn't invited to the wedding. Unfortunately, this custom, like many others, is slowly disappearing and it is becoming rarer to see a decorated tractor trailer full of fontosh cakes on Thursdays. I haven't eaten fontosh in a long time, so I wanted to make it myself. The recipe was given to me by a neighbor, who herself has participated in making cakes for weddings several times. I love how it worked out – it's that flavor. Here is the recipe.
Fonotosh cake, ingredients:
- 1 kg of flour
- 1 piece of yeast
- 500 ml milk
- 1 cup of sugar (the glass is made of yogurt, 180 ml)
- 100 g of fat
- 100 g margarine
- 1 small teaspoon of salt
- half a teaspoon of ground pepper
- 1 bag of ground cloves
For topping:
- 1 cup of sugar
- half a glass of water
- 1 tablespoons of oil
To coat:
- 1 beaten egg
Fonotosh cake, preparation:
- Separate a little from the total amount of milk, then put the yeast with a teaspoon of sugar to leaven.
- Put sugar in the rest of the milk, then heat it until it is lukewarm. Stir to dissolve the sugar.
- Mix the fat and margarine well with a fork so that the mass becomes compact.
- Add half the amount of flour to the mixing bowl, then add the beaten margarine and fat, ground pepper, ground cloves, salt, yeast and milk with sugar. Gradually add the rest of the flour, then knead the dough.
- Leave the dough in a warm place to double in size. Then divide it into nine parts. Roll each part into a long strip. Three strips are needed for one cake. Just twist one, roll it into a circle, and wrap the other two around each other, then put it in a circle from the inside of the first one. I made three cakes from this amount, and you can make more or less, depending on the size of the cake you want. Leave it in the pan on a piece of paper, brush it with a beaten egg, then leave it to rest for another 15 minutes.
- After that, put it in a heated oven at 200 degrees to bake for about 30 minutes.
- Meanwhile, put sugar, water and oil in a bowl. It is not necessary to cook it, you just need to stir it so that the sugar melts well and is introduced.
- While the finished cake is still hot, coat it with the topping on all sides using a brush, then leave it on a wire rack to cool completely.
Tatjana Stojanovic
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