I meant to make this for a long time and can’t remember when I had it last.
Well, it is very nice! A perfect Sunday lunch family treat. The Hungarian name “arany-galuska” here literally means “golden nuggets” or maybe “glorified noodles” but they probably best translate as “dumplings” in English. The toasted sugary walnuts and the baked, warm little doughballs with a hint of lemon zest served with some cool white wine custard (for the grown ups) – give an almost festive feel, so much so that Nancy Reagan famously popularised a similar recipe, serving the “Hungarian Coffee cake” or monkey bread at Christmas.
Ingredients (4-5 servings)
For the dough
- 330 g (3 cups) flour
- pinch of salt
- 3 tbsp sugar
- 2 egg yolks
- half lemon zest, finely grated
- 250ml (1 cup)milk
- 30g (1.1oz) melted butter
- 1 sachet of dried “quick” yeast (7g)
For the layering
- approx. 100g finely ground walnut (~ 1.5 cups)
- 4 tbsp icing sugar
- 80g (~ 3 oz) melted butter
For the Sauce
- thick vanilla custard
- dry white wine
( Approximate ratio I used: four parts vanilla custard mixed with one part wine, start with mixing a little wine in and you can always add more, just have to watch not to overdilute the custard, should retain a bit of thickness.)
Method
- Make a soft elastic dough, could use an electric mixer’s dough hook, a bread machine or do it by hand which will take a bit of effort but perfectly doable.
- Cover and set aside in a lightly oiled bowl at room temperature, let it rise and double in size, 1.5-2 hours.
- On a well floured surface, flatten out the dough evenly by hand to about an inch thickness.
- With a cookie cutter (here I used a 5cm/2” diameter one), make the dough balls. Easier and just as fine if you cut up the dough into square shapes with a knife.
- Butter a cake tin well (I used a 20cm/12” diameter cake tin), then dip each dough ball into melted butter, roll in the ground sugary walnuts and place in the cake tin, do two layers, just loosely thrown together.
- Cover with a tea towel and let it rest and further rise. Meanwhile preheat oven to 180°C (350°F).
- Bake for about 40 minutes until golden, check a few times and cover the top with foil if needed to protect the top from over browning.
- CUSTARD: I flirted with the idea of making my own with egg yolks, vanilla, corn flour and cream or milk, but ended up using shop bought fresh custard. What I did is mixed it with a bit of white wine and it made a really nice difference, tasted festive a bit like brandy butter.