Elf Ears

My grandma used to make these from a left over pastry from the sweet bread she was making. I never got an actual recipe from her, even though I made lots and lots of these when I was a kid; it always was "a more or less" thing, she usually just put about a kilo of flour into a bowl, and then added the rest by the "feel". The name for it also varies, from "little ears" to "little twigs" and similar, but since its ring gets lost in the translation, after moving the country we started calling them Elf Ears, because it is just much more cool. :)

Need
1 kg flour
200 g of butter
1 cup of sugar
7 g of dry yeast (or equivalent of the living one, usually 20g of living one = 7 g of dry)
3 eggs
100 ml of milk

Now there is traditional way to do it, or bread baking machine way. Ever since I got the later, I just set it on Dough program and done, but if you do not have one...

First you mix yeast with sugar and a bit of hand warm milk. When it starts bubbling happily (especially important with dry yeast, to sort of resurrect them back to the living), it is ready to be used. Then you put flour in a bowl, pour yeast into the whole thing, mix it gently and leave to rise for about an hour in a warm place, with a moist towel on top of the bowl. When it rises for the first time, add the rest of the ingredients and knead it properly. My grandma used to take a knife, get a chunk of a dough, cut it and see how much bubbles there is in it - the more the better. Either way, after about half an hour of kneading workout, you put the dough to rise for the second time. Once it is done after another hour, it is ready to be rolled.

So, we get our dough, prepared either way and roll it out. Then cut the dough in stripes, and after that you cut the stripes every 10-ish cm, in an angle, and make an incision in a middle of each piece. Then you take one end of it, and pull it through the incision, forming the "ears" (see image bellow).

The dough tends to dry fast, so it is handy either to have a kid on stand by, making the ears, while you fry those already made, or you have to use a cling film, to preserve the moisture.

Pour about 3 cm layer of oil in a frying pan and fry them on both sides for a minute, until they are nice and golden. Sometimes part of them will bubble out, aka get a "bear belly", which seemed to be a lot of fun and more tasty when I was a kid. Alternatively they can also be fried in a deep frying pan, in oil, just of course you want it to be a fresh oil, not to smell of fish, chicken or fried onions.

After they cooled off a bit, sprinkle with sugar powder for extra sweetness.