Sweet Chesnitsa from Vojvodina (Vojvođanska slatka česnica)

Ingredients:

• 1 kg of white wheat flour,
• 3 tablespoons of fat,
• 150 g raisins,
• 200 g walnuts,
• 200 g sugar,
• 2 bags of vanilla sugar,
• about half a liter of lukewarm water,
• very little salt,
• a silver or gold coin,
• 1 egg yolk.

Preparation:

1. To make dough for sweet česnica use flour and 2 tablespoons of fat and knead with lukewarm water salted with a pinch of salt. Knead in a bowl and on a kneading board until the dough no longer sticks to your hands.
2. Divide dough into three balls. Stretch the first ball into a sheet slightly thicker than the sheet of strudel (savijača) dough. Drizzle it with melted lard and cut into pieces that fit inside the baking pan for česnica.
3. Sprinkle each sheet piece you get with raisins, sugar, vanilla sugar and walnuts (ground walnuts, among which could also be some chopped walnuts). Place crusts one over the other in a greased baking pan. Do the same with the two remaining dough balls.
4. Put a coin between layers, somewhere in a middle.
5. Do not sprinkle surface crust with stuffing, just brush with beaten egg yolk.
6. Bake in oven over medium heat until nicely browned.

Notes:

Česnica in the majority of Vojvodina households looks like a real pie with a little thicker crusts. It is kneading early in the morning on a Christmas day, and serving to household members and guests before any other meal. The housewife makes a little ceremony of buying a coin from one who got it. She is giving some gift for exchange, because by traditional belief, coin must remain “in the house”.