Potica is a walnut roll and a traditional Slovenian dish that is prepared on many holidays. When I was growing up I never tried making my own potica but I remember the taste from different occasions. The potica I ate was always made in a bread baking dish. Only recently as I was experimenting with this recipe I tried making it in a bundt baking dish. I came to like the bundt version better.
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 in a period of about a month we ate a lot of potica. 🙂 After all these experiments we still like the classic walnut one the best but the macadamia and pistachio ones were also amazing and wonderfully surprising in taste.
This potica is really a perfect dessert for the holidays when you are with people you love. You won’t be able to tell it’s vegan. My husband and I got a lot of praise for this recipe from our friends and we also can’t get tired of eating it. It’s perfectly aromatic and a dessert that it’s not too sweet. The taste of enriched dough and the walnut filling is just wonderful.
I hope you give this recipe a try and maybe experiment with nuts that you haven’t tried in this dish before.
More delicious desserts with walnuts:
Vegan Walnut Roll (veganska potica)
Ingredients
Dough:
- 200 g bread flour
- 4 g (2/3 tsp) salt
- 24 g date sugar
- 100 ml (1/3 cup + 4 tsp) unsweetened soy milk
- 10 g fresh yeast
- 1/16 tsp turmeric powder for colour
- 32 g (heaped 2 tbsp) vegan butter
- 45 ml (3 tbsp) coconut cream just cream from a can of coconut cream without the water
- 1/8 tsp vanilla powder
- zest of 1/5 lemon
- 8 ml (1/2 tbsp) rum
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
- a drizzle of lemon juice
- 20 g raisins optional
To decorate:
- 3/4 – 1 tsp powdered sugar
Vegan sour cream:
- 40 g (2 1/2 tbsp) unsweetened soy yoghurt
- heaped 1/3 tsp lemon juice
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 turmeric powder to flour and mix.
- Melt vegan butter and coconut cream over low heat. Add date sugar, vanilla powder, lemon zest and rum 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 20 min before the dough is ready you can start preparing the filling. Soak raisins in water.
- Grind walnuts in a blender. Walnuts can be quite easily transformed into butter if you are working with bigger batches and if you are using a strong blender (like I'm using Vitamix). So to make them more of a flour consistency I put them in a blender in four 50g batches and grind them on lower speed.
- 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 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:
- Lightly flour your working surface. With your fingers tap the dough so that it becomes square shaped. Roll the dough into twice the diameter of a baking dish or even two cm more (width). I'm using 16 cm dish. The length should be a few cm more than that.
- 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 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 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.
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