Kurtos Kalacs or chimney cakes

This romanian pastry that is called Kurtos Kalacs, is often called in english chimney cakes. It's a fluffy yeast dough (similar to brioche) that is sweetened rolling them to a sugar and cinnamon mix, sometimes even in ground walnuts, and at old times used to be served in weddings. Nowdays, we can find them in small street kiosks that bake them in coal grills.
Hubby tried them first in Prague on a trip for his work and came back telling that it was so soft and delicious that I would surely love it!
I searched for the recipe on the web and indeed I found how to make them at home but eventually never tried them. It took me a couple of years until I would taste them in Budapest (I liked them so much that there was no day passing without eating at least two!!!) But still coming back home, I did not dare to try making them... until one evening, coming back home from a busy day, hubby had made them for me!!! That was a nice surprise :)
So, here it is our homemade Kurtos based on the following 2 recipes found online (thank you both!):

• http://honestcooking.com/kurtoskalacs-chimney-cake/ (Honest cooking)
• http://pearlsofbaking.blogspot.fr/2013/11/chimney-cake-kurtos-kalacs.html?m=1 (Pearls of baking) 

*** Beware, you have to find several carton moulds (from paper towels) before doing the recipe ***


Ingredients
240gr all purpose flour (of high quality)
7gr active dry yeast
30gr sugar
a bit of salt
1 egg
45gr melted butter
120ml lukewarm milk

For the topping:
melted butter, sugar, cinnamon
 

Procedure

1. Start by making the moulds. Use the cartons from paper towels or similar. Cover them completely with aluminium foil and brush the melted butter all over them.
2. Put in a small bowl the milk, some sugar and the yeast and allow around 10min to get foamy.
3. In the bowl of your mixer add all the ingredients and the above milk-yeast mixture. Knead to form a dough and continue for about 5min.
4. The result is a quite sticky dough. Do NOT add more flour, this is how it should be.
5. Cover and allow the dough to rise for an hour in a warm place. Often I cover it with a blanket :)
6. With a silicone spatula, cut parts of the dough and in a well floured surface shape thick sheets.
7. With a pizza cutter, divide in long ribbons of 1.5cm wide.
8. Start to wrap those ribbons around the homemade-buttered moulds like shown in the photos. When completely covered, brush them with butter and roll them in the sugar-cinnamon mix.
9. Arrange them in an oven tray like in the photos and bake at 190 degrees of Celsius for about 20min or until they get a nice golden color.
10. Tap them to get out of the moulds and allow a few minutes to rest if you can resist :)

Share only your dear ones !!!