2024 Author: Isabella Gilson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:14
In 2018, on April 8, Christians will celebrate one of the greatest holidays - the Holy Resurrection of Christ, also called Easter. So, you can not do without the traditional treat - Easter cakes. Of course, you can just buy them in the store, but homemade pastries will turn out much tastier. Today we will tell you how to cook Easter cake! The most interesting and at the same time simple recipes are in our selection!
How the custom of baking Easter cakes arose
According to an old legend, our Lord Jesus Christ, after His amazing Resurrection, visited the apostles at the time when they were having a meal. The middle place at the table was always free, and in the center of the table lay the round bread intended for the Lord. Soon a custom arose on Sunday to leave bread in the temple (“artos” - from the Greek “leavened bread”). He was placed on a special table, as the apostles did. During the entire Bright Week, during the processions around the temple, the artos was carried around, and after the Saturday service, it was distributed to the faithful.
As you know, the family is considered a small Church, therefore, graduallythere was a tradition to have your own artos. This is how Easter cake (Greek kullikion - “round bread”) appeared, which has a high cylindrical shape and is baked from rich dough. Gradually, the word also came into European languages: koulitch (Fr.), kulich (Spanish). Having Easter cake on the table during the Easter meal, we sincerely hope that the resurrected Lord is present in our home.
Helpful tips
Before you start baking, you need to familiarize yourself with how to cook Easter cake. Experienced chefs follow the following rules:
- Dough for baking Easter cakes should have a certain consistency: not be too liquid or thick. In the first case, the products will have a flat shape, the dough will spread during baking. In the second, Easter cakes will turn out hard, heavy and will quickly dry out during storage.
- The dough should have such a consistency that when dividing it with a knife, it does not stick to the blade, and when forming Easter cakes, you can do without the use of additional flour.
- The kneading process should be long, the kneading should be continued until the dough is well behind the hands or the table.
- During the preparation of Easter cake, as you know, the dough should rise three times. The first time - when it is in the stage of dough, the second - with the rest of the products already added, the third time - directly in the form. A well-fermented dough is the key to the success of any yeast-based baking.
- Dough for Easter cakes does not tolerate drafts, but heat, on the contrary, loves it very much, therefore, for proofing products, the best temperature+30-35 °C is considered.
- The baking dish is only half filled with dough, and when it takes ¾ of the way up, you can start baking.
- Spreaded Easter cake is covered with an egg beaten with butter and one tablespoon of water.
- In order for the cake to rise evenly, a thin wooden stick is inserted into the center of the product before baking. With its help, the readiness of the cake is checked. After some time since the start of baking, the stick is pulled out: if it is dry, the cake is ready.
- It is recommended to bake it in a humidified oven (putting a container of water on the bottom) and heated to 200 °C.
- Baking time depends on the size of the cake, ranging from 30 minutes to an hour and a half.
- If the top of the product starts to burn during baking, it should be covered, for example, with foil. The finished cake is placed on a barrel, allowing its bottom to cool.
Custard cake
Ingredients:
- 12 full glasses of flour,
- ½ cup melted butter,
- raw pressed yeast 50 g,
- a pair of eggs (better to take homemade),
- ¾ cup sugar,
- two glasses of black thin tea,
- glass of milk,
- ¾ cup raisins,
- s alt.
We offer to prepare a custard cake according to the following recipe. The day before, at 20:00, pour the yeast with half a glass of water (warm) and let it rise. Brew ½ cup of flour with the same amount of boiling milk and mix thoroughly. Afteryeast is suitable, we combine them with the dough, add s alt, eggs and chilled boiled milk. We add flour until a thick consistency is formed, knead and leave to rise until morning in a warm place. At 7:00 the next day, add warm melted butter, tea with sugar to the dough. With continuous stirring, add flour. Turn the dough out onto a floured surface and beat well until bubbles appear. After that, it is removed in an oiled container and left warm for another hour. After this time, the dough is laid out on the table and raisins interfere with it. The mass is placed again in the same container and allowed to rise for half an hour. Then the dough is laid out in molds and prepared for baking.
How to cook Easter cake
Ingredients:
- 3 kilos of premium flour,
- 800 grams of homemade butter,
- 20 homemade egg yolks,
- a kilo of sugar,
- 1, 5 liters of milk,
- 200 grams of raisins,
- 120 g raw yeast,
- 50 milliliters of cognac,
- vanillin,
- zest,
- 2 tbsp. l. decoys.
It's not difficult to cook such a cake at home: dilute the yeast in warm water (a glass), add a little sugar and flour to it, mix and leave for 20 minutes to ferment. A lot of dough is obtained from such a quantity of ingredients, so it is necessary to prepare a large container and sift the flour into it. Separately mix: yolks whipped with sugar, warm milk, yeast, cognac, vanillin, pour the prepared mixture into flour and carefullyknead for 15 minutes. Pour melted butter, clean and dried raisins, and zest into this mass in small portions. Knead the dough for a long time, approximately forty minutes.
Then leave it to rise. Knead the dough several times as needed. After it is ready, it should be divided into parts and laid out in the forms for Easter cakes, greased with vegetable oil and sprinkled with semolina. Ready "pasochki" are cooled on their sides, after which the top is smeared with icing.
Icing sugar
You can prepare sugar icing for Easter cakes as follows: take one glass of powdered sugar, add twenty milliliters of warm water to it, if you wish, add aroma additives and dyes. Put the mass on fire and warm it up to +40 ° C, while stirring continuously. If the icing turns out to be a thick consistency, you need to add a little water; if it is liquid, add powdered sugar. It should be applied to the cakes immediately after cooking, without letting it cool, and then you can decorate with decorative sprinkles.
Sugar-protein glaze
This icing for Easter cake is especially popular. How to cook it? To do this, take the following components:
- 2 egg whites;
- a glass of powdered sugar;
- a teaspoon of lemon juice.
Add lemon juice to the egg whites and beat with a mixer until stiff. Then, pouring powder in small portions, continue to beat at low speed. Protein glaze should be used immediately after preparation.
Easter cake
We offer you another recipe for a delicious and simple Easter cake. How to cook it? We will need the following set of products:
- 500 ml milk,
- raw yeast 50-60 g or dry 11 g (4 tsp without top),
- 6 eggs,
- 200g butter,
- 300g raisins,
- 350g sugar,
- a kilo of flour,
- vanilla sugar.
Make a dough with warm milk, yeast and half a kilogram of flour, let it come up. Meanwhile, separate the yolks from the proteins and mix them with granulated sugar and vanilla sugar. Beat egg whites with a pinch of s alt until stiff. In the fermented dough, add in turn the yolks pounded with sugar, softened butter, whipped proteins and the remaining flour. Knead the dough for a long time until it stops sticking to your hands, after which we put it in a warm place. After the dough has risen once, mix in the raisins, put it back in the heat and wait until it has increased well in volume. We lay out the finished dough in molds and put in the oven at a temperature of 100 ° C for 10 minutes. Then we increase the temperature to 180 degrees and bake the products until cooked. We decorate ready-made Easter cakes with icing, or you can use fondant for Easter cake (how to cook it - we will describe below).
Easter Fudge
This coating for Easter cake turns out to be very tender, melting in your mouth. For him, take a glass of sugar and halfglass of water. We cook the syrup over low heat, until a “sample” of a weak ball, when a drop of syrup does not spread in water, but kneads in the fingers like a very soft dough. When the sugar syrup is boiled, wipe the edges of the saucepan with a damp cloth to prevent the syrup from drying out. We cool the finished fudge to a temperature of 37-40 ° C and beat with a mixer, after which we put it on the cake. You can substitute water for fudge making with milk.
Kulich "Homemade"
And now let's look at how to cook Easter cake "homemade". To create it, you need to prepare the following products:
- milk - 1.5-2 cups;
- flour - kilogram;
- egg yolk - 10 pieces;
- pressed yeast - 50 g;
- sugar - 1.5 cups;
- butter - 200 g;
- vanilla sugar - 3-4 tsp;
- raisins - ½ cup;
- cognac - art. l.;
- lemon zest - 3 tsp;
- grated nutmeg - 2 tsp;
- saffron tincture - 1 tsp;
- s alt.
Opara is made as follows: half a glass of flour is brewed with exactly the same amount of milk and quickly kneaded to an elastic, even mass. Yeast is diluted in warm milk (100 ml), and half a glass of flour is poured into the mixture, mixed and left for 10 minutes - to rise. After that, both masses are combined and cleaned in a warm room for one hour. At the end of this time, all products, except for raisins, are mixed, and the dough is put to rise. When it greatly increases in volume, raisins are added, which you needroll in flour first. The dough is allowed to come up again and proceed to cutting and baking Easter cakes. After the "pasochki" have cooled, they are coated with icing or fondant and decorated.
Lenten cake
For some people, such as vegetarians or raw foodists, it is unacceptable to eat animal products. But they, like other Christians, rejoice at the Resurrection of Christ. Here we will specially tell them how to cook a lean cake with poppy seeds. It will need products of plant origin:
- pumpkin, almonds - 200 g each;
- 2 oranges;
- dates - 150 g;
- walnuts, dried apricots, raisins - 100 g each;
- sesame, flax seed - 50 g each;
- cardamom, nutmeg (ground) - half a teaspoon each;
- poppy for decoration;
- cinnamon - teaspoon.
Grind walnuts and almonds in a blender until flour, grind sesame and flax with a coffee grinder. Add spices to the dry mixture and mix. On a medium-sized grater, a pumpkin is rubbed, raisins and chopped orange zest are added to it. Add the juice of one orange to the dates and dried apricots and grind to a puree. Combine puree with dry mixture, mix well. How to cook a cake? The mass is placed in a form, previously covered with cling film, formed and well compacted. The cake mold is put in the refrigerator for one hour, after which the plant-based product is taken out of the mold and decorated with poppy seeds.
Royal
And now we will tell you how to cook the Tsarsky Easter cake for Easter. The recipe is simple, but the result will certainly please the hostesses. It requires the following components:
- raw yeast - 50 g;
- heavy cream - three glasses;
- high grade flour - 1200 g;
- butter - 200 g;
- sugar - 200 g;
- 15 yolks;
- 10 crushed cardamom seeds;
- nutmeg;
- 50g almonds;
- 100 g each of candied fruits and raisins;
- a tablespoon of crackers.
On cream and yeast, using 600 grams of flour, prepare a dough. Add the remaining products to the well-fermented dough, knead well and leave the finished dough to rise for 1.5-2 hours, during which time it is beaten once more. The risen dough is divided and placed in breadcrumbs sprinkled with breadcrumbs. Easter cakes prepared according to the recipe are very rich. Experienced bakers recommend baking them in small molds.
What to cook from Easter cake after Easter
Very often after the celebration of the Bright Sunday there is a large amount of leftovers from Easter cake. By the way, you should know that consecrated Easter cakes should never be thrown away. We offer several options for using such baking.
Crackers
From Easter cake you can make rich croutons by cutting pastries into small cubes and drying them in the oven. You can serve them with coffee or tea or eat them just like that. They can also be used to make kvass.
Cake
If you grind such crackers into small crumbs, then on their basis you can make a very tasty cake - potatoes. To do this, add powdered sugar, butter, cocoa to the base and roll it into balls.
Chocolate cake
This dessert is made from the remains of a stale cake using a chocolate bar. It should be melted over a fire, add 50 grams of butter to it and pour the resulting mass over the remaining "pasochki" slices after the holiday.
Sweet cupcakes
Easter cake makes excellent cupcakes with apples. What should be done? Prepare a mixture of a glass of milk, a couple of eggs, a spoonful of sugar and vanilla. Pour the rest of the cake with this mass, adding apples cut into small pieces to them. Products are baked in the same way as well-known muffins.
Croutons
You can cook very tasty croutons for breakfast. To do this, cut the cake into pieces of the desired shape, beat the egg with milk separately and dip our blanks into the mixture. Fry in a pan on both sides, you can also bake them in the oven.
Trifle
Very interesting dessert with an unusual name. It can be served directly as a dessert or as a breakfast. Easter cake is cut into small squares, they are soaked in natural yogurt, placed in small containers and put in the refrigerator for 30 minutes or even overnight. After that, favorite berries or chopped fruits are laid out on top of the soaked pieces. Dessert is decorated on topwhipped cream, you can use condensed milk or jam.
Bread pudding
This dish is especially popular in Germany and England. To prepare it, you will need a little patience, as well as the following products: sugar, cream (milk), eggs, vanillin.
For 200 grams of Easter cake you will need 2 eggs, 300 ml of milk (50 of them are recommended to be replaced with cream), 50 g of sugar, half a teaspoon of vanilla extract, your favorite berries or fruits.
Mix milk, sugar, extract, eggs. At the bottom of the form, fold the cake cut into small pieces and pour the prepared mixture. Then lay another layer of Easter cake, on top - fruit and pour the rest of the mixture. Let it soak well and bake in the oven for 40-45 minutes at 180°C. It is considered ideal to cook it in a water bath.
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