Roscos de Vino for St. Nick

One treat I've been lusting after for days now is roscos de vino, which is a Spanish Christmas staple that I've been meaning to replicate, well, ever since I came back from Spain. At the back of my mind, I swear, there's infinite room for recipes and various little treats that I try once then spend the rest of my life looking for an occasion to bake again. Anyway. Since Christmas itself is oversaturated with sweets and since it's very tricky knocking an idea out of my head once it's in, I decided to find some middle-ground.

Now, I'm not sure everyone out there celebrates St. Nicholas - I know most of the Balkans and Eastern Europe do, and I know the Netherlands does also and Germany and Austria, I think. If I'm not mistook, they're the ones with those fascinating little Krampus parades to mark St. Nick's (which technically, I think, shouldn't be a Christian holiday since the Saint in question actually died on December 6th. Of course, it's not the only 'death' Christian celebration, but there's something theologically rotten there, for sure.). Anyway.

In Romania, what you're supposed to do on the eve of St. Nick's, on the night of December 5th, is clean your boots and put them out in the corridor of your house, where they can then be filled by Saint Nicholas (who was known for his penchant to make secret gifts to people). And although this, as most of the other Christian holidays, has been perverted by ruthless commercialism, the thing you're actually supposed to gift (or that St. Nick is meant to bring you) is sweet treats. Traditionally, oranges.

If we're talking from a materialistic perspective, it's sort of the runner-up to Christmas, with kids getting candy and various other teeth-rotters, in advance of the big day. It's also tradition to leave a little treat for Saint Nicholas next to your boots, and while I don't really leave out my boots, I did decide to indulge my hankering for roscos and at least make the treat.

What do you need for Roscos de Vino?

As the name suggests, you're gonna need wine. But not just. Now, the below quantities are adjustable depending how many you wanna make. I wanted to get quite a few, since I'm taking some to my mum's as well. Beware, this recipe yields quite a few cookies and they are addictive, so if you know you can't resist, cut this recipe in half.

• 600g of flour (any fucking flour works);
• 80g toasted sesame seeds (if they ain't toasted, don't worry, we're gonna toast those fuckers in a bit);
• 120-140g powdered sugar;
• 200g butter or ghee;
• sweet white wine (muscat type works, but so does any sweet white wine, honestly);
• Orange zest;
• Anise (granites or powder, I used powder);

And what do you do?

First things first, you're gonna want to get your butter/ghee to room temperature so you can work with it, so leave it outside beforehand and go do something else for a minute. I left it near the fire. I had nothing else to do while it warmed naturally, so.

Now the first thing you wanna do is find a big frying pan. I say big because you're gonna want one that can fit all that flour and not make a mess. Next, you're gonna heat that pan up on the fire, then dump all the flour in because we're toasting it. Now, keep the fire to a low/medium and stir continuously, else your flour's gonna get burned (and you don't want that 'cause you're gonna feel it in the roscos. This will take something like 10 minutes. Keep an eye on the flour. You'll know it's toasted cause it starts to get a little bumpy-clumpy. Get all that flour out of the pan and set to one side to cool.

Next, we wanna toast the sesame seeds. The same rules apply, more or less, but I lowered the fire even more because these babies burn easy. Remember to stir. I'm not gonna tell you how you know they're toasted because it's quite obvious. The seeds get this sort of brown-ish hue and you think hey, that's what I thought toasted sesame seeds looked like! And you're right. Don't you feel nice now?

Get that off the fire as well and turn it off, I think we're done for now.

Next, we combine the ingredients. Now would also be a good time to preheat the oven at a nice, steady 180C (not the fan function!). Combine everything. Sesame seeds. Flour (churned). Sugar. Anise. Orange zest (alas, I don't very much trust store-bought oranges since they're sprayed with all sorts of toxic crap, so I scrubbed half an orange with bicarbonate soda, then grated the zest. Looking back, I wish I'd used more 'cause it does make a difference, so if you trust your orange provider, do feel free to use the zest of one or two full oranges). What else? Butter. Incorporate the butter gradually, folding it into the batter. Leave the wine for last.

When you've got a nice, cakey, somewhat flour-y batter composition, add the sweet wine. You wanna make sure the other ingredients are mixed together thoroughly before, else the flour's gonna clump with the wine. Just a word to the wise.

Right, once everything's done (you want dough that's not too wet and not too bone-dry either), you scoop out the batter onto a sheet of baking paper, cover with a second sheet, and roll a rolling pin over it until the batter's evenly spread and about 1-cm-thick.

Now, traditional roscos are supposed to be round with a hole in the middle (like American donuts), but I found myself lacking in cookie-cutter shapes, so I used a wine glass to cut these simple round shapes. Good enough. Next, bung them into the oven for 10-12 minutes (you can even go up to 15, depending on oven, but for me, 12 was enough). You want to get them out when the cookies are still white-ish and soft, but don't stick to the paper. Dust with more powder sugar or icing sugar for that traditional snowy look et voila.

Guess all that remains to be said is Happy St. Nicholas. Hope you were a good boy/girl this year and didn't get a lump of coal in your boot.