There is a bakery shop in almost every neighbourhood in Turkey. Almost all of them sell crescent muffins, it is one of my favorites. But not all can make a good ones, in the end I decided to make my own. Here is a safe recipe.
I was disappointed to learn that the filling was made of stale cakes. So buying them from bakery shops come to an end for me. I use ready flan cakes for filling or any stale cake of my own – which does not come around too often – I suggest you do the same.
You will need to mix the stale cake with raisins, walnuts, milk and cinnamon. Then make shapes as in below picture.
Once you start shaping the outer crust widen the dough pieces using a rolling pin to more or less palm size. Then place the cocoa filling in the middle horizontally and curl up the sides of the dough to cover completely the filling. Keep the middle part thicker and the corners thinner. Then curl to give a crescent shape.
The rest is just finishing the topping and baking. Enjoy.
Crescent Muffins / Ay Çöreği
Ingredients
Dough
- 350+/- grams flour all-purpose
- 100 millilitres milk
- 50 grams powdered sugar
- 10 grams instant dry yeast
- 125 grams butter room temperature
- 1 egg
- 1 egg white
- 1 pinch salt
Filling
- 500 grams stale cocoa cake crumbs
- 40 grams nuts or walnuts roughly chopped
- 1 tablespoon powdered sugar
- 1 tablespoon cocoa
- 1 tablespoon cinnamon
- 100 millilitres milk
- 75 grams seedless sultanas
For the topping
- 1 egg yolk
- 1 teaspoon powdered sugar
- 2 tablespoons almond fillets
Instructions
Filling
- Crumble the stale cake in a bowl. You may use a food processor.
- Add all the other filling ingredients and combine well to obtain a dough.
- Divide into 12 equal pieces and make long not-so-thin cigar-like pieces about 10 centimetres and set aside.
Dough
- Mix the warm milk, powdered sugar and instant yeast. Wait for 5 minutes.
- Then add the egg and the egg white with a pinch of salt, mix again.
- Then add the butter using a mixer.
- Finally add the flour gradually. Knead all together to obtain a non-stick dough.
- Without waiting for the dough to ferment, cut the dough into 12 pieces.
- Using a rolling pin widen each piece of dough to make an oval/rectangular shape about the size of a palm. Should not be too thin.
- Place the cocoa cake filling cigar-looking rolls horizontally in the middle.
- Meet the ends of the widened dough sheet meet in the middle and cover the filling.
- Make the rolls get a crescent shape. Do not press the middle part too much. The shape should be fat in the middle and thinner towards in the curved corners.
- Place an oven sheet on to an oven tray.
- Place each crescent muffin onto the oven tray.
- Mix the egg yolk with powdered sugar and spread on each muffin using an egg brush.
- Sprinkle some almond fillets on each muffin.
- Bake in a preheated oven at 180° Celsius until golden brown on all sides.