According to the tradition that has been developing for centuries, Christmas in Russia is no longer lean, but not fatty food. So, as a dessert, it is customary to serve a Christmas pie with berries on the table. Here is the recipe for such a dish in the interpretation of Julia Vysotskaya, as well as diversify the menu with festive delights from the Europeans.
Christmas berry cake
As the main ingredient, Julia Vysotskaya recommends taking any berries: both fresh and frozen, from jam, and even dried. It’s just that each time the pastries will sparkle with new colors, because Christmas cakes are the decoration of the festive table. Here is a list of ingredients that will be needed for such a masterpiece:
- berries - 200 g;
- premium wheat flour - 125 g;
- cottage cheese of any fat content - 100 g;
- sour cream 20% - 200 g;
- granulated sugar - 75 g;
- chicken egg - 1 piece;
- egg yolks - 3 pieces;
- ground nuts (almonds) - 75 g;
- butter - 100 g;
- vanillin - 1 sachet;
- a pinch of salt.
Cooking process
Despite the fact that there are a lot of ingredients, preparing a dessert will not take too much time from the hostess. So, to start, melt the butter for the dough. Sift the flour into a separate bowl, put the cottage cheese there, pour the melted butter and slightly add salt. Christmas cakes, the recipes of which we present, traditionally cannot do without ground nuts. Before grinding the almonds, it can be slightly calcined in a pan, and for the special taste and piquancy of the dish you can use the nucleolus of a bitter variety of the fruit. Add the ground nuts and egg to the mixture. Now we thoroughly knead all the ingredients.
Cake making
Take a baking dish with wavy edges, grease it with oil. Now we distribute the resulting dough inside the form in such a way as to fill not only the bottom, but also the edges. Forming the future basis of the cake, use your hands, press the dough to the bottom and to the sides of the mold. When all the mass has been distributed, we will send our base to the freezer for about half an hour, after pricking it with a fork.
Cooking stuffing
In the meantime, we’ll start preparing delicious holiday fillings. Here again, there is nothing complicated: just mix sour cream, sugar, berries, vanilla and yolks. The only important point is the lack of water in the berries. If you thawed them - drain the liquid, if you took them from jam - drain the syrup. After mixing all the ingredients and waiting for the half-hour indicated in the recipe, we take out the frozen form and put the filling in it. Christmas cake should be baked in an oven preheated to 180 degrees for at least an hour, and a good filling density will signal the readiness of the dish. Check the readiness with a toothpick is unlikely to succeed, if only from the very edge. The duration of baking is due to the fact that the dough is sent to the oven frostbitten. By the way, if you want to diversify this recipe, then you can safely replace berry ingredients with fruit ones. Thus, you can bake a Christmas cake with apples, oranges, pears and even bananas.
Dried fruit cake
Our next recipe is a good solution for forever busy housewives. Indeed, in finished form, this cake can be stored in the refrigerator for up to 2 weeks, and to prevent hardening, daily sprinkle festive pastries with cognac. We will learn how to prepare a Christmas cake from Yulia Vysotskaya with dried fruits, and for this we will prepare the following ingredients:
- premium wheat flour - 350 g;
- fresh chicken eggs - 5 pieces;
- butter - 350 g;
- brown sugar - 350 g;
- dried apricots -200 g;
- raisins - 200 g;
- prunes - 200 g;
- dried cranberries - 200 g;
- dried figs - 200 g;
- almonds and hazelnuts, 150 g each species;
- baking powder for baking - 1 teaspoon;
- cognac - 2 tbsp. spoons.
Important! The moisture content of dried fruits affects the duration of baking. If there are wet ingredients in the dough, Christmas cake is not baked immediately. In this case, the readiness of the dish can be checked with a toothpick.
Cooking technology
The oven can be heated in parallel with the start of mixing the components, the final temperature is 180 degrees. We take dried fruits and cut them into pieces of equal size. Grind nuts in a blender or in a combine. Next, beat brown sugar and butter, and then introduce one egg into the mass, continuing to slowly beat after each time. Combine the resulting brown base with grated nuts and pieces of dried fruit, then sift the wheat flour and baking powder here.
Such a Christmas cake during baking will rise very much, so the shape must be used deep and round. Lubricate the container with butter and lightly sprinkle with flour, lay out the dough and send it to the preheated oven. The baking process will proceed in 2 stages:
- Bake for 15 minutes at a temperature of 180 degrees.
- We reduce the temperature to 160 degrees and stand the Christmas cake from Julia Vysotskaya in the oven for another 45 minutes. And so that the top does not burn, cover the pastries with parchment paper.
It remains to make sure that the festive dish is fully prepared by placing a wooden stick in it. If the cake is completely baked, take it out of the oven and sprinkle with cognac. Ready-made pastries have an unusual dark shade.
Traditional Russian Christmas cake
Different peoples of Europe prepare various treats for the Christmas table. This also applies to pies. If a festive feast in Germany is difficult to imagine without the traditional Stollen cake, then the Russian table is unlikely to do without a meat pie. Moreover, from ancient times in Russia they served pastry with chicken slices for the holiday, and already as an everyday dish, cooks baked muffin stuffed with minced meat. The dough most often started on sour cream. We will not depart from this tradition either. For the test, we need the following ingredients:
- premium wheat flour - 3.5 cups;
- sour cream 15% - 200 g;
- fresh chicken egg - 2 pieces;
- baking margarine - 200 g;
- granulated sugar - 1 teaspoon;
- salt - 0.5 tsp;
- baking powder for dough - 2 tsp.
Our traditional Christmas chicken pie will contain a filling of the following ingredients:
- chicken legs - 2 pieces;
- chicken breast - 1 piece;
- onion - 3 pieces;
- salt and spices (to taste).
In order to prevent the filling from appearing excessively dry, in addition to fillet, we will use tender and juicy meat removed from chicken legs.
Knead the sour cream dough
First, we will mix the liquid ingredients: sour cream, softened margarine for baking and eggs, add salt and granulated sugar to the resulting mixture. Then we introduce into the dough flour enriched with oxygen (previously sifted), as well as a baking powder. We will knead the dough until we are convinced of its perfect elasticity. Many Christmas cakes are made on the basis of bulk dough mixed with filling (this related to the previous recipe). The chicken pie recipe is quite traditional. Therefore, we will not depart from the rules and place the dough in the refrigerator for about an hour. This time is enough for gluten to form. In the meantime, we will be preparing the filling.
We cook the meat filling and form a pie
Separate meat from bones and skin and cut into small cubes, add finely chopped onions, salt and pepper. You can mix the filling with your hands, pressing lightly so that the onion gives its juiciness to the meat. We take out the dough from the refrigerator and divide it into 2 approximately equal parts. Then we take a rectangular baking dish, the bottom of which we will line with one half of the dough. Do not forget to pre-grease the bottom and sides of the form with vegetable or butter. We roll out a layer of dough on the table, and then put it in a container, forming the sides with our hands. Then put the filling on the dough layer, not forgetting the juice - it will give the holiday dish aroma and tenderness.
The finishing touch is the formation of the upper layer of the pie and laying the second layer of dough on top of the juicy filling. We cover the product and pinch the edges with any kind of patterns - waves, pigtail, with the help of an overlap and so on. In the center we form a small hole for the hood. If desired, you can leave a little dough on the decoration of the top of the cake, for example in the form of a carved sheet. The first 20 minutes we will bake at a temperature of 200 degrees, and then another 20 minutes, reducing the temperature of the oven to around 170. At the end of the process, we traditionally take a sample for the preparedness of the dish. By the way, meat can also be checked by pulling a piece through the central hole.
Bulgarian Christmas cake Banitsa with feta cheese
If we talk about the traditional festive dishes of Europe, one can not help but mention another unsweetened version of baking native to sunny Bulgaria. Try to cook Banitsa with feta cheese pie using the prepared filo dough. This will diversify your traditional holiday menu and will not take much time. As ingredients you will need:
- filo puff pastry - 1 pack;
- feta cheese - 300 g;
- nonfat milk - 2.5 cups;
- fresh chicken egg - 4 pieces;
- butter - 50 g.
Cooking process
Thaw the filo dough beforehand, and crush the feta cheese with a fork in a separate bowl. Pieces should not be too small. Add 3 eggs to the cheese and mix the ingredients thoroughly. There are several layers in the packaging of the finished dough. We begin to lay the cake in the form from the first layer, after having greased it with butter. We will not distribute the filling all, so that it suffices to cover the following sheets. If we measure the amount of filling with teaspoons, then on 1 sheet of filo we will spread 5-6 tablespoons of feta cheese. Each subsequent layer of dough is greased with oil to prevent sheets from sticking together. Make sure that no voids form inside. So, we alternate the layers of dough and toppings, and the last sheet is called to complete the design.
Without milk filling, such a cake will turn out dry. To prepare it, shake the egg with milk and pour evenly on the newly formed pie. We bake a traditional Bulgarian dish in an oven preheated to 180 degrees for 40 minutes. Readiness can be determined by appearance, which is signaled by a golden brown crust of the upper layer.
Conclusion
As you can see, the Christmas cakes, the recipes of which we have provided you, are diverse. You can serve baked goods in the form of a dessert with berries or dried fruits, or in the form of a snack with meat or feta cheese - it all depends on the mood of the hostess.
Enjoy your meal!