Brioche (and other nameless cakes)

I decided I'm not going to buy bread anymore.
From now on, only flour, and I'll just have to learn how to make the right things with it.
So recently I made these cakes, and I kept thinking I can't post them because until I find out their English name, which I still haven't. But anyway, that's beside the point, they were really really good, and when making them, I ended up with left over dough. It was a sweet dough, a lot like my Challah dough, so I made little rolls of it and put them in the oven along wit the cakes.

The rolls were almost better than the cakes, so I decided next time, I'm just gonna make it like this, so I ended up with this thing I called Brioche. The cool thing about it was that when I made a cake of it, I first flattened it, spread it with chocolate/apples & cinnamon and than made a strudel. A stage I decided not to skip for the Brioche, only this time i just spread melted butter and cinnamon. The result was pretty amazing, it was much like a Challah only with thin veins of butter and cinnamon, one of the roommates said he could take a bath in it, which I hope is German for: "That's really good". I thought it was anyhow. Here it is:



Dough:

500g White flour.
100 Grams very soft butter.
2 Eggs.
1/3 Cup white sugar.
1 Tsp honey.
1 Tsp salt.
1 Tbs dry yeast.
1 glass of milk.
1/4 glass of water.

For the brioche:

30g Melted butter.
1/2 Tsp cinnamon.
1 Tsp sugar

For glaze:

1 Yolk.
1/4 Glass of water.
1/3 Glass sugar.
1 Tbs lemon juice.

Preparation:

- In a small bowl, mix the yeast, honey and water. Let it sit for about 5 minutes.
- Meanwhile mix the flour, salt and sugar in a large bowl.
- Form a small hole in the middle, add in the yeast mix, then eggs, milk and butter.
- Mix until dough is formed, then continue for about 3 minutes, you don't want it to be a cake, but you don't want it to be very tough either.
- Let rise for about an hour, until it doubled it's size.
- Heat oven to 180c.
- On a floured surface, flatten the dough until it's about 2cm thick, spread the melted butter/sugar/cinnamon mix, then roll carefully.
- You now have a 'sausage' of dough, you can braid it however you want, it's not as hard as it looks (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_guFQR-6dw4).
- Beat egg yolk with a splash of water, and brush the dough.
- Bake for about 35 minutes.
*** 10 minutes before you finish baking, make the glazing syrup (you can skip this stage if you don't want it too sweet, but it really makes it taste and look better)
- In a small pot, melt the sugar with water, stir in lemon juice. Continue cooking and stirring for about 5 minutes. Drizzle over the baked Brioche.



Variations:

For Nameless cake:

Chocolate:

About half a can of Nutella or any other chocolate spread.
*you can sprinkle cinnamon and chopped hazelnuts.

Apples:

5 Grated apples.
1 Tsp Cinnamon.
1 Tsp brown sugar.
Handful of chopped hazelnuts.

Preparation:


- Make the dough as seen above, knead as little as possible.
- Flatten, spread a thin layer of selected filling, and roll.
- Using a sharp knife, cut along the sausage, leaving a small part still intact.

- Twist the cut ends a bit, so they face out, and braid.

Gently move to a greased rectangular pan, brush with yolk, and bake for about 35 minutes. Add syrup as described above.

And a 'Rogalach' version: