This vegan walnut roll just might become your new favourite vegan dessert. The taste is exquisite, delightful and heavenly aromatic. Potica is a walnut roll and a traditional Slovenian dish prepared for many holidays. When I was growing up, I never tried making my own potica, but I remember its taste from various occasions. The potica I had was always made in a bread baking dish. Only recently, while experimenting with this recipe, did I try making it in a bundt baking dish – and I came to prefer the bundt version.
My husband and I created this vegan take on potica together. We didn’t get it right the first time, but we love the end result – it really tastes amazing. We tried many different nut fillings for potica, from classic walnut to macadamia, pistachio, cashew, almond, pecan, and peanut. Let’s just say that, over the course of about a month, we ate a lot of potica. 🙂 After all these experiments, we still like the classic walnut the best, but the macadamia and pistachio versions were also amazing and wonderfully surprising in taste.
This vegan walnut roll is the perfect dessert for the holidays when you’re with the people you love. You won’t be able to tell it’s vegan. My husband and I received a lot of praise for this recipe from our friends, and we also never get tired of eating it. It’s perfectly aromatic and not overly sweet. The taste of the enriched dough and walnut filling is simply wonderful.
I hope you give this recipe a try and maybe experiment with nuts that you haven’t tried in this dish before.
Have you made this recipe? Let me know in the comments below. I would love to hear your feedback.
More delicious desserts with walnuts:
- Vegan Walnut Crepes (veganske orehove palačinke)
- Walnut Bliss Balls (Potica Inspired)
- Vegan Apple Crumble
Vegan Walnut Roll (veganska potica)
Ingredients
Dough:
- 200 g bread flour
- 4 g (2/3 tsp) salt
- 24 g date sugar
- 105 ml (7 tbsp) unsweetened soy milk
- 10 g fresh yeast
- a pinch of turmeric powder for colour
- 1/8 tsp vanilla powder
- 32 g (heaped 2 tbsp) vegan butter
- 45 ml (3 tbsp) coconut cream just cream from a can of coconut cream without the water
- 8 ml (1/2 tbsp) rum
- zest of 1/5 lemon
Filling:
- 200 g walnuts ground
- 52 ml (heaped 3 tbsp + 1 tsp) coconut cream just cream from a can of coconut cream without the water
- 1/6 tsp vanilla powder
- 1/8 tsp Ceylon cinnamon powder
- 1/2 tsp ground coffee
- a pinch of salt
- 80 g date sugar
- 40 g vegan sour cream recipe below
- 12 ml (heaped 2 tsp) rum
- zest of 1/5 lemon
- 42 ml (scant 3 tbsp) aquafaba
- 1/16 tsp freshly squeezed lemon juice
- 20 g raisins optional
Vegan sour cream:
- 40 g (2 1/2 tbsp) unsweetened soy yoghurt
- heaped 1/3 tsp freshly squeezed lemon juice
For greasing the baking dish:
- coconut oil melted
To decorate:
- powdered sugar
Instructions
Dough:
- Sieve the flour over strainer and add salt. Mix together.
- Measure date sugar in a small bowl and set aside.
- Heat soy milk over low to medium. Crumble yeast in a small bowl, add lukewarm soy milk. Add about 3/4 tsp of date sugar and about 1/2 tsp of flour. Mix together well. Wait for it to foam (about 10 min).
- Meanwhile add date sugar, turmeric and vanilla powder to flour and mix.
- Melt vegan butter and coconut cream over low heat. Add rum and lemon zest to the butter mixture. Mix together.
- When the yeast mixture is foaming add it to the flour and mix. Then add also the butter mixture. Mix until you get a wet dough.
- Knead the dough 2-3 min. If needed lightly flour your working surface.
- Flour a big bowl, place the dough inside and flour again the top of the dough. Cover with a towel and leave it to rise 60-90 min or until it gets double in size.
Filling:
- About 30 min before the dough is ready you can start preparing the filling. Soak raisins in water.
- Grind walnuts in a blender. Do this in four batches of 50g to make them in the consistency of flour (if you do it in a single larger batch you'll transform them into walnut butter). If you already bought ground walnuts, skip this step.
- When you have all ground walnuts in a bowl boil coconut cream and pour it over the walnuts. Mix well. Add vanilla, cinnamon, coffee, a healthy pinch of salt, date sugar, vegan sour cream, rum and lemon zest. Mix often while you are adding these ingredients.
- In a smaller plastic bowl add aquafaba (aquafaba is a liquid from a can of chickpeas) and a small drizzle of lemon juice (lemon juice helps with achieving higher peaks of whipped aquafaba). Whisk it with a hand mixer until you get fluffy whipped cream. Gently mix it into filling.
Assemble:
- Flour your working surface. With your fingers tap the dough so that it becomes square shaped. Roll the dough into twice the diameter of your bundt pan or even two cm more (this is going to be your width). I'm using a 16 cm diameter dish, therefore my dough width comes to 32-34 cm. The length of the dough should be a few cm more than that (36-38 cm).
- Brush the filling over the whole surface of the dough except at the very top leave a little bit of an empty space. Sprinkle raisins on top of the filling.
- Roll the dough into a shape of a cylinder (starting from where the filling is all the way to the edge of the dough towards the edge that doesn't have the filling) and while doing that correct it at sides once or twice.
- Grease the baking dish with melted coconut oil and place the dough inside. Connect the ends together and pinch them together at the top. Correct any area where the dough is maybe higher than elsewhere.
- Cover with a towel and leave it to rise another 30-45 min.
- After that time bake it at 180 °C on the middle rack (or one rack lower) for 40-45 min.
- Leave it to cool down a little bit before you turn around the baking dish and take it out of it.
- Sprinkle powdered sugar on top.
- Cut into 8 equal pieces.
2 Comments
jordan
December 8, 2024 at 20:09is the date sugar just to make it healthier or does it add something specific? wondering if i can equally swap it for regular sugar as i don’t like the taste sugar alternatives give, plus its one less thing i would need to buy.
Nina
December 9, 2024 at 01:39Hello! I understand your concern. The recipe is written with date sugar because it produces the best taste, in my opinion. It adds an aromatic taste that white sugar doesn’t. I tested the recipe with white sugar and the dough was more moist because date sugar also adds fibre, while white sugar doesn’t. I needed to reduce the amount of soy milk in the dough (to about 85 ml). White sugar is also sweeter than date sugar, so I used less of it (about 15 grams for the dough and 50 grams for the filling).