Happy Easter

We are indulging in a number of prepackaged "treats" (or rather sugar in various forms with various colors).  One thing I did make that was delicious, Portuguese sweet bread.  It is similar to Hawaiin bread or the brand King's rolls, but much thicker and a slight zestier taste.  I am half Portuguese, but shamefully do not know much about my culture, but I do know that there are a few Portuguese meals I will always love from my childhood.  This sweet bread is number one.  I combed the internet for a number of authentic seeming recipes and ended up with this one.  I was hesitant to trust it with no comments or ratings, and let's face it, the site seems a little archaic, but it seemed like the best combination of ingredients for me. It is the slowest raising bread I have ever made.  My little brother warned me when he tried another recipe, that it took forever to rise and the recipe does say 2-3 hours for each rise and it requires 2 rises before shaping!!!  Well, it was more like 4 or more hours for each rise. I let it do it's first rise over night in the fridge. Then did it's second rise for 5 hours in our kitchen, then 2 more hours after I shaped it.  These puppies went in the oven at 11:00 at night.  Was not expecting to be up that late waiting for bread to rise. Definitely letting the baked bread sit over night made the texture and flavor better.  It is not a stretchy dough, so I experimented with different shapes to see what cooked best.  I have so many memories of my mom making loafs in round cake pans and the whole center would be dough.  I wanted to avoid that so I just braided a ring in a round pan, alleviating the middle.  It did end up doubling in size to fill in the middle, but it was cooked and the best looking!! My rolls and just plain round pan loaf were cooked fine and yummy tasting too.  The egg wash gave it that beautiful shiny brown crust that was soft and would peel off.  I will absolutely be making this a holiday staple now.  My adjustments, a hearty splash or 2 of lemon juice and I didn't have mace so I subbed a pinch of ground cloves and no cinnamon. Everything else was good.