Cornucopia baskets and acorns made of two-colored dough

Preparation steps

• If you are kneading the dough in a mixer then make it light first so you don’t have to wash the bowl and hook to mix the dough. Dissolve the yeast in milk with a little sugar and leave to make a foam. Put all the other ingredients in the mixing bowl and finally the yeast foam, then knead a soft dough. Transfer it to a covered bowl, cover and let rest in a warm place for 30-40 minutes, until it doubles in volume. Knead the dark dough in the same way. If the dough sticks a little, add a little more flour, and if it is too hard, add a little warm milk. It all depends on how much moisture is in the air, so sometimes you need a little more flour, and sometimes a little less.
• While the dough is resting make a mold for the Cornucopia basket. Make a cone from a larger piece of foil by crumpling and rolling, to which you will twist the top. Now line the entire mold with baking paper, if necessary cut the paper into strips to line the curves. I left the cavity in the middle because it makes it easier for me to turn the mold when I coat it with dough. Finally, before baking, I put a cup in that cavity to keep the shape of the opening, and under the raised part where the horn is, I put an upside-down bowl to prevent the dough from stretching during baking.
• Transfer the risen dough to a floured surface, separate half from the white and save for pastries, and separate 1/4 from the dark dough, this will be for the caps of the acorns. Roll out both doughs into a rectangle 40 cm long and 1.1 / 2 cm thick. Use a sharp knife to cut the dough into 2 cm wide strips. Gently roll up the strips and join two of the same color by gently twisting them. This is how you make all the strips, and only then coat the mold with them. The strips will be larger than the mold, just tear off the excess dough and tighten the edges. The dough comes down alternately one row of light dough, then one row of dark dough. For the edge part, roll one strip of both colors.
• Now place the cup in the cavity of the basket, and place the upside-down bowl next to the dough under the horns. Coat the whole cornucopia with beaten egg and bake in a preheated oven at 170 degrees for about 20-30 minutes, depending on the oven, if you see that the dough is too fast to absorb the color, cover with foil and reduce the heat a little more. Take the baked basket out of the oven and let it stand for about 10 minutes, and only then take out the glass and remove the bowl. Just in a warm basket, gently pull out the mold and let it cool completely.
• Meanwhile, from the light dough and from the remnants of the basket, form small balls the size of a golf ball and place in coated molds. I was left with dark dough from the basket, so I made a few zircons of inverted colors. Roll out the dark dough as thin as possible and cut it with a mold wider than a muffin tin, the dough will shrink during baking.
• Coat the balls with beaten egg, place a cap of dark dough and press an almond stick in the middle and coat the cap with egg. Bake for 15-20 minutes until the pastries are baked and lightly browned.
• Cool the baked pastry and the basket completely, and only then does the pastry go down into the basket. Place a few yellowed leaves for decoration between the pastry and around the basket. If you make pastries and a basket in advance, you can now wrap them well and freeze them. when thawed they will be as if they had just been baked.