Kulich and vanilla pashka
The Lent is ending and the Easter Holiday is ahead. According to Russian traditions people usually bake kulichi, paint eggs and make the curd paskha. We offer you 2 recipes of kulitch and paskha – you can find all the ingredients in the Stockmann Gastronome.
Russian kulich
10 glasses of flour3 glasses of milk
50 g of fresh yeast
10 eggs
1,5 glass of butter
2 glasses of sugar
1 teacup of rum or vodka
2 teaspoons of salt
100 g of stoneless raisins
Zest of one lemon
Vanilla
Warm up the milk. Add 50 g of fresh yeast and stir well. Pour 5 glasses of sifted flour into a deep bowl then add the milk with melted yeast. Knead the dough well and put it to the warm place. Put the soft butter in the bowl and pound it till it becomes white. Add 10 yolks one by one and then 2 glasses of fine sugar. Add lemon zest and vanilla. The quality of the kulich depends on how well the dough was kneaded, so it takes some time to knead it well.
When the dough has risen, after about 1-1,5 hour, pour in a cup of rum, add 2 teaspoons of salt and 1 glass of flour, knead the dough well and pour in the prepared butter mass. Mix it well again. Then add from 3 to 4 glasses of flour one by one, kneading the dough after each glass very hard and very long till it becomes smooth and elastic and stops sticking to hands.
Add raisins into the dough add 10 whipped egg whites. Stir the dough well and put it into a warm place to rise for the second time. When the dough has risen, place it carefully onto a cutting board powdered with flour and separate it into several pieces. Put each piece in a baking form (or in 1 big form) so that it tills about ¼ of the form volume. Let it stay for the third rise. Heat up the oven till 180°C, put in the forms with dough and bake for about 40-50 minutes checking the readiness by a wooden straw. (If you put all the dough into one big form the baking will take about 1,5 an hour). Decorate ready kuliches with sugar powder or cover them with glaze.
Vanilla paskha
600 g of curd (Russian cream cheese)3 glasses of cream
1 glass of sugar
Half of vanilla stick
For perfect paskha you need curd of extra fine quality - fresh, dry, crumbly. At Stockmann you will find a wide range of different sorts of curd for perfect paskha, desserts and healthy meals.
Pressed curd trough sieve, then add the cream and mix together. Wrap the mixture into gauze and hang it above the bowl for 12 hours to drain. Then add 1 glass of fine sugar, vanilla extracted from vanilla stick, stir well and put the mass into a form lined with the gauze. Cover with a lid and put something heavy on the form for half an hour. Then carefully take the paskha out of the form, remove the cloths and put on the plate.