Kulich saffron from Veronika Sergeeva
My ex-mother-in-law, with whom we immediately developed an excellent relationship, somehow brought and gave me an old, rather shabby, uncovered, cookbook of her mother. With what pleasure I began to read this outlandish language in which it was written, with the old measures of weight and volume. Something began to try to cook on it. The mother-in-law said that her mother often baked a delicious Easter cake based on this book and made a royal Easter out of it. My mother-in-law baked it in her family, and now I bake this cake for my son.
Ingredients
Servings 8 Easter cakes 450 g each- 1360 g flour
- 365 g butter
- 475 g sugar
- 690 g milk
- 15 yolks
- 50 g fresh (pressed) yeast
- 120 g seedless raisins
- 50 g dried fruits and raisins optional
- saffron tincture (soak a generous pinch of saffron in vodka or cognac)
- 14 g of salt
- spices to taste (1/4 teaspoon ground ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg, cardamom, cloves)
Cooking
Step 1
Soak raisins and other dried fruits in cognac or rum in advance.
Step 2
Knead a dough of 408 g of flour and 340 g of warm milk with yeast diluted in it. Close and leave to ferment for 1.5-2 hours.
Step 3
Melt butter, cool.
Step 4
In the fermented dough, add the remaining flour, yolks mashed with sugar, the remaining milk, saffron tincture, finely ground spices. Knead the dough slowly and thoroughly, gradually adding melted butter. Just before the end of the batch, add raisins with dried fruits and nuts.
Step 5
Leave the dough to rise in a warm place for 2.5-3 hours, during which time make two punches.
Step 6
Divide the dough into portions and fill paper forms no more than ¾ of the volume. Cover with foil and leave to rest for 1.5-2 hours.
Step 7
Bake Easter cakes at 175-180 C until done, checking with a toothpick.
Step 8
Ready Easter cakes very carefully remove from the oven, put on its side or hang on skewers until cool.