Roscón de Reyes

The roscón de reyes is the typical spanish cake eaten the Epiphany day, which marks the end of the Christmas celebrations. It's eaten for breakfast with a cup of hot cocoa and whoever finds the bean or figurine hidden inside of it must pay for the next year's roscón.
The roscón is aromatized with orange flower water and citrus zest (usually orange and lemon zest) and decorated with candied fruits.

Every year on the 5th and 6th of January there are long queues in front of the bakeries in order to get freshly baked roscones and thus, when one of my friends told me that she was trying to bake her own cake but was having some trouble with the raising, I suggested her to come to muy home and give it a try together :-)
I love baking, that's obvious, but I've never baked before along with somebody else and I'm happy that I finally did it! It's waaaaay more fun!
So, my friend came home on the 5th in the afternoon and we finished by the evening-early nigth ^^ It looks like her problem had something to do with the way the recipe indicated how to deal with the yeast, but it's solved now. The resulting cake was fluffy and tasted nicely even though we didn't add much orange flower water.
We made 2 cakes out of the recipe, one for her, one for me, but the original recipe is meant to be for making a cake enough for four people.

Ok then, here's the recipe for a four-people roscón (or 2 smaller ones):

Ingredients:

20ml lukewarm water
4g active dry yeast
40g melted unsalted butter (you can use salted butter)
a pinch of salt (skip this if you're using salted butter)
50ml milk
250g all-purpose flour (and 50g more for kneading)
40g sugar
1/4 teaspoon orange flower water
1 large egg, lightly beaten
Grated zest of 1/2 lemon and 1/2 orange
1 bean

For decoration:

Candied fruits
40g sugar
Water (the ammount depends on how you want the sugar to be on the roscón)
1 large egg, lightly beaten

Method:

1. In a small bowl, pour the warm water and sprinkle it with yeast and let stand for 5 minutes. Stir to dissolve yeast completely.
2. In another bowl mix together the egg and the sugar until well combined.
3. Then add the milk and the orange flower water to the eggs and mix until well combined.
4. Add the melted butter to the egg mixture and, again, mix until well combined.
5. In a large mixing bowl, stir together the flour, salt and orange and lemon zests.
6. Then stir in the yeast and the egg-milk-butter mixture. The dough should be very soft but don't worry, we're going to incorporate more flour while kneading.
7. Dust the counter with the rest of the flour, transfer the dough to the counter and knead the dough for 5 minutes to form a soft and sighly sticky ball. When the dough comes together, put it back in the bowl and cover it with plastic or a tea cloth and let it raise for 1 hour in a warm place.

8. After the raising the dough will stick to the bowl. Punch the dough down and roll it to form a ball. Then push your thumb through the middle of the ball to make a hole. After this begin to roll the dough around your wrist to widden the hole (like a hula hoop) and get the traditional look of the roscón (something like a huge doughnut). Transfer the dough to an oven rack.
9. Hide inside the dough a bean or a ceramic figurine. Brush the dough with the egg and decorate with the candied fruits and the sugar-water mixture.

10. Proof for approximately 1 hour at room temperature, or until about 1 and 1/2 times its original size.
11. Preheat oven to 180°C.
12. Bake the roscón for 20-30 minutes or until golden brown with the oven rack on the middle shelf.

13. Transfer to a cooling rack. Wait until cooled before serving.

This picture was taken on the Epiphany breakfast, see how fluffy came out the cake? ^^