In April 8, 2018, Christians will celebrate one of the greatest holidays - the Holy Resurrection of Christ, also called Easter. So, you can not do without the traditional treats - Easter cakes. Of course, you can just purchase them at the store, but much tastier will be baking, made by yourself. Today we will tell you how to make Easter cake! The most interesting and at the same time easy-to-execute recipes are in our selection!
How did the custom bake Easter cakes
According to ancient tradition, our Lord Jesus Christ, after His amazing Resurrection, visited the apostles at the time when they had a meal. The middle place at the table was always free, and in the center of the table lay round bread intended for the Lord. Soon a custom arose on Sunday to leave bread in the church ("artos" - from the Greek. "Leavened bread"). He was placed on a special table, as the apostles acted. Throughout the Holy Week, during the processions around the church, the arthos wore itself, and after the Sabbath service it was distributed to believers.
As you know, the family is considered a small Church, because gradually the tradition of having your own artos emerged. So there was a kulich (Greek kullikion - “round bread”), which has a high cylindrical shape and is baked from pastry. Gradually, the word came out in European languages: koulitch (Fr.), kulich (Spanish). Having a cake on the table during the Easter meal, we sincerely hope that the risen Lord is also present in our house.
Useful Tips
Before baking, you need to familiarize yourself with how to prepare Easter cake. Experienced chefs comply with the following rules:
- The dough for baking Easter cakes should have a certain consistency: do not be too thin 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 to be tough, 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 could do without using additional flour.
- The kneading process should be lengthy, the kneading should be continued until the dough is well behind hands or the table.
- During the preparation of the Easter cake, as you know, the dough should rise three times. The first time - when it is in the stage of pairing, the second - with the remaining products already added, the third time - directly in the form. Well-fermented dough is the key to the success of any yeast baking.
- The dough for Easter cakes does not tolerate drafts, but it is very fond of heat, on the contrary, therefore + 30-35 ° C is considered the best temperature for proofing products.
- The baking dish is only half filled with dough, and when rising, it takes , you can start baking.
- The distant Easter cake is covered with an egg whipped 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, they check the readiness of the Easter cake. Some time after the start of baking, the stick is pulled out: if it is dry - the cake is ready.
- It is recommended to bake in a humidified oven (putting a container of water at the bottom) and heated to 200 ° C.
- Baking time directly depends on the size of the cake, ranges from 30 minutes to an hour and a half.
- If during baking the crown of the product starts to burn, it should be covered, for example, with foil. Ready cake is put 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 (it is better to take homemade ones),
- ¾ cup sugar
- two glasses of black sparse tea,
- a glass of milk,
- ¾ cup raisins,
- salt.
We offer you to make custard cake according to the following recipe. The day before, at 20:00, pour yeast in half a glass of water (warm) and let them rise. ½ cup flour to brew with the same amount of boiling milk and mix thoroughly. After the yeast comes up, combine them with the dough, add salt, eggs and chilled boiled milk. We add flour until a thick consistency is formed, knead and leave to rise until the morning in a warm place. At 7:00 the next day, add warm melted butter and tea with sugar to the dough. With continuous stirring, introduce flour. Put the dough on a table dusted with flour and beat well until bubbles appear. After that, it is cleaned in a greased container and left to warm for another hour. After this time, the dough is laid out on the table and raisins interfere with it. The mass is put back into the same container and allowed to come up for half an hour. Then the dough is laid out in tins and prepared for baking.
How to make Easter cake
Ingredients:
- 3 kilograms of premium flour,
- 800 grams of homemade butter,
- 20 yolks from domestic eggs,
- kilogram 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 make such a cake at home: dilute the yeast in warm water (a glass), add a little sugar and flour to them, mix and leave for 20 minutes for fermentation. A lot of dough is obtained from such a number of ingredients, so it is necessary to prepare a large container and sift the flour into it already. Separately mix: yolks whipped with sugar, warm milk, yeast, cognac, vanillin, pour the prepared mixture into flour and mix thoroughly for 15 minutes. Pour creamy dissolved butter, clean and dried raisins, zest in small portions into this mass. Knead the dough for a long time, approximately forty minutes.
Then leave it for lifting. If necessary, knead the dough several times. After it is ready, it should be divided into parts and put into molds for cakes, greased with vegetable oil and sprinkled with semolina. Ready-made "baskets" cool on the side, after which the top is smeared with glaze.
Icing
You can prepare icing sugar for Easter cakes as follows: take one glass of icing sugar, add twenty milliliters of warm water to it, if you wish, add flavoring and coloring agents. Put the mass on fire and warm it to +40 ° C, while stirring continuously. If the glaze turns out a thick consistency, you need to add a little water, if liquid - add powdered sugar. Apply it to the Easter cakes immediately after cooking, not letting it cool, and then you can decorate it with decorative topping.
Sugar Protein Glaze
Especially popular is precisely such icing for Easter cake. How to cook it? To do this, take the following components:
- 2 egg whites;
- a glass of powdered sugar;
- teaspoon of lemon juice.
Add lemon juice to the egg whites and beat with a mixer until a firm foam. Then, pouring powder in small portions, continue to whisk at low speed. Use protein glaze immediately after cooking.
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 of milk
- raw yeast 50-60 g or dry 11 g (4 tsp. without top),
- 6 eggs
- 200 g butter,
- 300 g of raisins
- 350 g sugar
- kilogram of flour
- vanilla sugar.
Make a dough on 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 whites with a pinch of salt in a strong foam. In the fermented dough, we add the yolks, crushed with sugar, softened butter, whipped whites and the remaining flour, in turn. 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 rises once, we interfere with the raisins in it, remove it again in the heat and wait for it to increase well in volume. We put the finished dough into molds and put it in the oven, with a temperature of 100 ° C for 10 minutes. After which we increase the temperature to 180 degrees and bake the product until cooked. We decorate the finished cakes with glaze, but you can use fudge for the cake (how to cook it - we will describe a bit below).
Fudge for easter cake
This coating for the cake is very delicate, melting in the mouth. For him, take a glass of sugar and half a glass of water. We cook the syrup on a small fire, until the “test” of the weak ball, when a drop of syrup does not spread in the water, and in the fingers is kneaded like a very soft dough. When sugar syrup is being boiled, wipe the edges of the saucepan with a damp cloth to prevent the syrup from drying out. Cool the finished fondant to a temperature of 37-40 ° C and beat with a mixer, then apply it to the Easter cake. Water for making fudge can be replaced with milk.
Easter cake "Home"
And now we’ll look at how to make a homemade Easter cake. To create it, you need to cook 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;
- salt.
The dough is started as follows: half a glass of flour is brewed with exactly the same amount of milk and quickly mixed to an elastic, even mass. Yeast is bred in warm milk (100 ml), and half a glass of flour is poured into the mixture, mixed and left for 10 minutes - to rise. Then both masses are combined and cleaned in a warm room for one hour. At the end of this time, all products, except raisins, are mixed, and the dough is set to rise. When it greatly increases in volume, raisins are added, which must first be rolled in flour. The test is allowed to come up again and begin to cut and bake cakes. After the "little ones" have cooled, they are coated with icing or fondant and decorated.
Lenten Easter Cake
For some people, for example, vegetarians or raw foodists, it is unacceptable to eat animal products. But they, like other Christians, rejoice in the Resurrection of Christ. Here we’ll specially tell them how to cook a lean cake with poppy seeds. For it, you will need products of plant origin:
- pumpkin, almonds - 200 g each;
- 2 oranges;
- dates - 150 g;
- walnuts, dried apricots, raisins - 100 g each;
- sesame seeds, flax seed - 50 g each;
- cardamom, nutmeg (ground) - half a teaspoon;
- poppy for decoration;
- cinnamon - a teaspoon.
Grind walnuts and almonds in a blender until flour, grind sesame and flax with a coffee grinder. Add spices to the dry mix and mix. A pumpkin is rubbed on a medium-sized grater, raisins and chopped orange peel are added to it. In the dates and dried apricots add the juice of one orange and chop to a puree state. Combine the mashed potatoes with the dry mixture, mix well. How to cook a cake? The mass is placed in a form pre-coated with cling film, formed and well tamped. The cake pan is put in the refrigerator for one hour, after which the vegetable-based product is removed from the mold and decorated with poppy seeds.
"Royal"
And now we’ll tell you how to cook Easter cake “Royal”. The recipe is simple, but the result will certainly please the hostesses. The following components are necessary for it:
- raw yeast - 50 g;
- fat cream - three glasses;
- premium flour - 1200 g;
- butter - 200 g;
- sugar - 200 g;
- 15 yolks;
- 10 crushed cardamom grains;
- nutmeg;
- 50 g almonds;
- 100 g candied fruits and raisins;
- a tablespoon of crackers.
On cream and yeast using 600 grams of flour, prepare the dough. In the well-fermented dough, add the remaining products, knead well and leave the finished dough to rise for 1.5-2 hours, during which time it is still beaten once. The approached dough is divided and laid in cake forms sprinkled with breadcrumbs. The cakes made 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 Holy Resurrection, a large amount of remains from the Easter cake remains. By the way, you should know that blessed Easter cakes should never be thrown away. We offer several options for using such baking.
Crackers
You can make rich crackers from Easter cake by cutting the pastries into small cubes and drying them in the oven. You can serve them with coffee or tea, or eat just like that. They can also be used to make kvass.
Cake
If you crush such crackers into small crumbs, then on their basis you can make a delicious cake - potatoes. To do this, add powdered sugar, butter, cocoa to the base and roll in the form of balls.
Chocolate cake
Such a dessert is prepared from the remains of stale cakes using chocolate bars. It should be melted on a fire, add 50 grams of butter to it and pour the slices of the “Easter egg” remaining after the holiday into the resulting mass.
Butter Cupcakes
Easter cake makes great apple muffins. What should be done? Prepare a mixture of a glass of milk, a pair of eggs, a spoonful of sugar and vanilla. Pour the remnants of Easter cake with this mass, adding apples cut into small pieces to them. Products are baked in the same way as well-known muffins.
Toast
You can cook delicious croutons for breakfast. To do this, cut the Easter cake into pieces of the desired shape, separately beat the egg with milk and dip our billets into the mixture. Fry in a pan on both sides, you can also bake them in the oven.
Trifle
A very interesting dessert with an unusual name. It can be served directly as a dessert or as breakfast. The cake is cut into small squares, they are soaked in natural yogurt, placed in small containers and cleaned in the refrigerator for 30 minutes or even all night. After that, on top of the soaked slices, your favorite berries or sliced fruits are laid out. Top dessert is decorated with whipped 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, vanilla.
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, favorite berries or fruits.
Mix milk, sugar, extract, eggs. At the bottom of the mold, fold the cake, cut into medium-sized pieces, and fill it with the prepared mixture. Then lay another layer of Easter cake, fruits on top and pour the mixture with the rest. Let it soak well and bake in the oven for 40-45 minutes at 180 ° C. Ideal is cooking it in a water bath.