Romanian fluffy pies filled with ricotta cheese
The delicious cheese pies known as poale-n brau or branzoici are emblematic and very well known between the Romanian desserts.Soft, fluffy, sweet and flavored with rum and raisins, the cheese pies are folded from the corners to the center and filled with sweet cheese, milk, eggs, raisins and citrus zest.
Ingredients
Ingredients for dough for branzoici (Poale-n brau):
- 500 g flour
- 240 ml milk
- 7 g dry yeast or 25 g fresh
- 2 eggs medium
- 60 g butter soft
- 90 g sugar
- 1 pinch salt
- 1 orange zest
Ingredients for cheese filling for branzoici (Poale-n brau):
- 350 g ricotta or drained cottage cheese
- 150 g sugar
- 2 eggs medium
- 2 tbsp white semolina
- 1 orange zest medium
- 50 g raisins soaked in rum or Brandy
- 1 pinch salt
- 1 tsp vanilla paste
Ingredients for brushing the top of branzoici (Poale-n brau) for getting a golden color:
- 1 egg yolk
- 2 tbsp milk
Instructions
Branzoici (Poale-n brau) - Dough preparation
- First thing first, soak your raisins in a good rum or Brandy for an additional touch of flavour.
- Sift the flour into a bowl.
- Add the dry yeast and mix (if using fresh yeast, rub it with 1 teaspoon of the total amount of sugar and then add it in the center of the sifted flour).
- Warm the milk and gradually add it to the flour. Be careful! The milk should not be hot, but only slightly warm.
- We add the eggs, sugar, salt, orange zest, the soft butter and we start to knead the dough.
- Knead until you get an elastic dough. If the dough sticks to the hand, you can gradually add about 50-100 g of flour.
- Put it in a bowl.
- Cover it with food-grade plastic wrap or a clean kitchen towel and leave the dough to rise, in a warm place, away from cold air currents, for 2 hours, or until it doubles in volume.
- I’ve put it to rest in the oven, turned-off of course :)
Branzoici (Poale-n brau) - Filling Preparation
- I have used ricotta for the filling as is much more easy to find it here but if you use cottage cheese remember to drain it as you don’t want a liquid filling.Put the ricotta or the well drained cottage cheese in a bowl, add the orange zest, eggs, the drained raisins (the ones that you previously soaked in rum or Brandy), semolina, vanilla paste and salt.
- Stir until the filling becomes homogeneous, then put it in the refrigerator.
Branzoici (Poale-n brau) - Assembly
- Look at this beautiful risen dough.
- Pour the leavened dough on the work table powdered with flour and spread it in a rectangular sheet about 7-8 mm thick.
- Cut the dough into squares of about 7-8 cm.
- Put in the center of each square 1 tablespoon full of filling.
- Glue very well two opposite corners of each square.
- And then the other two corners.
- Put the pies in a baking tray lined with baking paper and leave them to rise for another 45-60 minutes, covered with a cotton cloth, in a warm place.
- After they have risen, brush the pies with the mixture of yolk and milk.
- Bake them in the preheated oven at 200°C, for 15-20 minutes or until golden brown.
- We take them out of the tray, place them on a grill and after they have cooled a little, you can powder them with vanilla powdered sugar if you wish and enjoy them.
Notes
Resting time in total is: 3 hours
So, it may take around 4 hours in total to enjoy them, way much longer than my usual recipes but believe me it is well worth it the effort.
They are delicious!