Ingredients
Method
For the Dough
- Place all the dry ingredients into a large bowl - flour, sugar, lemon zest, vanilla sugar, and dry yeast. Mix them well. Then add lukewarm milk, room temperature would be just fine. Mix and then knead until you get a soft, smooth ball of dough. It should take about 3 minutes. Cover the bowl with a wet kitchen cloth and let it rest and rise for an hour or 90 minutes until doubled in size.
Sponge cakes
- You'll need three layers of sponge cakes - one dark and two white ones. Make each of them separately. While one is baking, prepare the next one.
- Mix all the dry ingredients - flour, sugar, vanilla sugar, and baking powder (and cocoa powder for dark cake) - in a smaller bowl. Melt coconut oil. Add milk, rum, and coconut oil to the dry ingredients and mix well with a whisk. Don't over-mix it!
- Use the baking tin you'll use for making potica. Place parchment paper inside and pour in the first batch of batter. Even it out and bake for 10 minutes. In the meantime prepare the next batch of batter, but make sure to not add wet ingredients to the dry ingredients until the previous cake is baked. Mix wet ingredients with dry ones just before pouring the batter into the tin.
- When the cake is done, take it out of the oven and let it rest for 2-3 minutes. Then take it out and place it on a cooling rack. Repeat the procedure with the rest of the cakes.
Cheese Filling
- Place all the ingredients for the filling into a blender. Blend well until you get a smooth cream. In case the cream seems too thick, add a bit more yogurt. Let the cream in the blender or take it out and place it in a bowl where it will wait until you need it again.
Walnut Filling
- If walnuts are not ground yet, ground them. You can do that in a food processor. Then place ground walnuts in a bowl along with cinnamon and sugar.
- Warm up plant milk until boiling hot. Pour boiling hot milk over the walnut mixture and mix well until you get a walnut cream. The cream will thicken up with time so don't worry if it seems runny at the beginning.
Putting it all together
- Take your leavened dough, it should be doubled in size, soft to the touch, and airy. Flour a clean working surface well. Place the dough on top of it and sprinkle some flour over the dough, too. Take your rolling pin and roll out the dough into a large square. It should be big enough to wrap your baking tin in it.
- Place parchment paper in the baking tin you baked the sponge cakes in. You can also grease it. Then gently lift the rolled-out dough and place it into the tin. You'll have to gently lift the edges to make sure the dough is inside the tin and is forming some kind of shell. It should be placed close to the corners and walls to make space for fillings. Make sure to be gentle with the dough so you don't tear it. Make sure there's some left outside as you'll need to cover potica with it - kind of like closing a box with a lid attached to it.
- You'll first put in some walnut filling. I used 4 tbsp for the first layer. Spread it out into an even layer.
- Place the white sponge cake over it and press it gently.
- Then pour some cheese filling on top of the white sponge cake. It will probably drip around the cake but don't worry, it will look nice either way. Just make sure to pour enough on top to cover the cake with it.
- On top of the white filling goes the dark sponge cake. No need to press it down this time.
- Pour more cheese filling on top of that dark sponge cake and cover it up.
- Next comes the second white sponge cake. It might be easiest if you put the thick walnut filling on top of the white sponge cake first and then place them both inside the baking tin. Make sure the walnut filling is evenly spread out.
- Once all of the fillings are inside, it's time to wrap it up. Don't worry if the last sponge cake and walnut filling are not leveled with the top of the baking tin. It's okay if potica is a bit higher.
- Now take the remaining dough that should be attached to the dough inside of the tray and place it on top of the walnut filling. Using scissors, cut away the extra dough and tuck the edges into the tray. Cut away the extra parchment paper, too.
- Using a toothpick, make some holes in the dough on top so the air will have somewhere to go. This way the top part of the dough will not lift up while baking.
- Bake potica at 180°C for 40 minutes until golden brown. Once baked, take it out of the oven and let it cool down for 10-15 minutes. Then take it out of the baking tin, remove the parchment paper, and place your potica on the cooling rack. Let it cool down completely. You can cover it with a clean kitchen cloth, just make sure it's not washed with a softener otherwise potica will taste like soap.
- Before serving, you can dust it with powdered sugar.