Begin by adding all the dry ingredients together - flour, yeast, sugar, salt, lemon zest (everything apart from the dry fruits).

In a separate bowl or measuring jug add the cream, egg yolks, vanilla extract and melted butter. If the mixture is quite cold, warm it up a little in microwave or oven. This just gives your bread a bit of a 'kick start' and you won't need to wait for your bread to rise that long.

Now, mix the wet ingredients into the dry, tip on the work counter and start kneading. You really need to give it a good 10 minutes or so. The dough will be on the sticky site, but try to avoid adding any more flour if you can. The dough will also feel quite oily, but that's exactly how it should be.

Half way through your kneading add all the dry fruits and almonds (you can add them in at the beginning, but they have a bad habit of popping out of the mixture as you are kneading).

When the sweet dough is nice and elastic and feels very smooth, leave it to rest in a bowl, covered by a plastic bag or damp tea towel. Leave it to double in size - this can take up to 2-3 hrs depending on how cold your kitchen is. Don't give up on it, if it doesn't rise as quickly as you think it should. All the sugar, butter and cream is slowing down the process of prooving, so just be patient.

The next stage is to divide your dough into several pieces. How many depends on how elaborate you want to be. Traditionally this Czech Christmas Bread - Vanocka is platted like a challah, the base is platted from 4 strands, then middle layer from 3 and the top from twisted 2 strands. For this you need to divide your dough into 8 equal parts.

Then roll out 7 seven of them to about 25-30 cm, first plat the 4 strand base ( I found that you tube videos are really helpful for this...), place it on oiled baking tray and make a slight indentation with rolling pin in the middle of the plat (long-ways). Then add the 3 strand plat on the top, brushing it a little with egg white to stick it down. Roll out the 8th piece of dough in to double the length and twist round. Make slight indentation on the top of the 3 strand plat, brush with egg white and add the twisted plat.

Leave the 'Vanocka' sweet bread to double in size. This can easily take few hours, but don't try to rush it by puting the sweet dough into too warm place. The cream, butter, eggs, sugar and everything else beyond the flour, water and yeast is 'weighting' the dough down and because of that it can take a very long time for the dough to even start rising.

When the dough has doubled in size, gently brush with egg white, add some extra almonds on the top (these can be flaked almonds) and bake at 200C for about 10-15 min and then lower the temperature to 180C (or even 160C if the dough looks like it's browning too quickly).

It takes a good 30-40 minutes to bake (or little longer depending on how wet your mixture originally was and how you oven works) - so after this time, check it as if it was a cake - with clean wooden skewer - if it comes out dry - the bread is ready.

Leave to cool on a cooling rack - sometimes it's easier to bake the 'Vanocka' on a tray lined with baking parchment. The bread is quite heavy and the parchment just helps you to lift the bread from the tray.