Natural and with a twist: about 800 Easter cakes are baked for Easter by a confectioner from the Vitebsk Theological Seminary

Before the great church holiday of the Resurrection of Christ, Easter cakes appear on store shelves, they can be found for every taste - with poppy seeds, nuts, candied fruits. However, they are especially delicious when cooked with prayers - in bakeries at temples, for example. Experienced confectioner Svetlana Artyukh, even in retirement, works in her specialty at the Vitebsk Theological Seminary and bakes about 800 Easter cakes of various weights and types for the celebration alone in 3-4 days. She shared with BelTA correspondents a signature recipe for Easter cake, told what this product is afraid of and what is the most raisin of homemade Easter cakes with exclusively natural decorations.

If you have a dough mixer, feel free to put all the ingredients in it, knead the dough well. Then you can leave it there, covered with a towel, wait until it rises, and knead again. And so twice. If there is no such kitchen appliance, then knead the dough with a mixer or by hand.

It must be remembered that Easter cakes really do not like noise and are afraid of drafts, so if your house is being renovated or your neighbors are persistently drilling walls with a drill, then ask them to stop work for at least a couple of hours. In gratitude, you can treat zealous hard workers with the resulting fragrant Easter cake. As for the wind, if it walks around the house back and forth, you need to block its path and at least close the windows so that the timid pastries do not settle and disappoint you with the result.

If you cook everything in one day, like Svetlana Artyukh, and she has to do at least two batches per shift for 160 Easter cakes a day, then the dough can be proofed - in a warm place so that it begins to breathe more intensively, you can even portion.

Before laying in the molds, the dough must be rolled in order to remove excess air bubbles from it - without fanaticism, easily and gently. For convenience, so that nothing sticks to your hands, you can lubricate them with vegetable oil. It is advisable to fill the molds by a third, because yeast baking is rather capricious - it will rise and may go beyond the limits of the permitted capacity.

Before decorating, it is advisable to cool the finished Easter cakes completely. Svetlana Artyukh said that she prepares milk mastic at home in advance so that she does not get distracted at work and in the park, but only spreads the decoration on pastries on top of sugar fudge. “For mastic, I don’t buy a ready-made mixture for it, but I take only natural ingredients. Then homemade solidifies well and becomes like an ordinary milk candy,” the confectioner emphasized.

Svetlana Artyukh uses dry and condensed milk , powdered sugar, citric acid and vanillin for mastic . "Everything needs to be mixed and can be immediately used to make a delicious decor. From this mass, like from plasticine, it is easy to sculpt decorations - leaves, petals, carved stems. Then they can be laid in beautiful bright patterns, especially if you add food coloring to the mastic", - said the master.

Ready Easter cakes are sprinkled with holy water by the clergy. The consecrated pastries are then sent to the church shop, other temples, which leave their orders for Easter sweets.

Svetlana Artyukh has worked as a confectioner for over 30 years, she worked at various enterprises in Vitebsk. Her experience grew along with the skill and the number of recipes that she discovered for herself in a new interpretation. She experimented a lot, and also dared to take a swing at new dishes, the recipes of which were not available. Through trial and error, the master even mastered bird's milk when it first appeared in the culinary community. “It won’t work for you anyway,” colleagues predicted to her then, but Svetlana Artyukh accepted this as a challenge. The first pancake came out lumpy, but the second time the delicious dessert turned out to be a feast for the eyes and to the delight of taste buds. Now she comes to the aid of the worldwide network, where you can find absolutely any dish. How many Easter cakes, muffins, cakes she has already baked - and do not count.

The confectioner of the 6th category revealed her own simple, but time-tested and sophisticated children's taste (she has three children and six grandchildren) recipe for Easter cake, which every reader can take into service and safely include it in the pre-Easter preparation.

For a kilogram of flour you will need 300 g of sugar, 50 g of yeast, 5 eggs (only yolks can be taken), 200 g of butter, 15-20 g of vanillin, 200 g of raisins. As the master has already said, first the dough is made, then all the ingredients are mixed, the dough rises in two passes - and into the oven. Easter cakes of 500 g will be baked for 25-30 minutes at 180 degrees, and less weight, respectively, 5-10 minutes less. Instead of raisins, which not everyone loves, like, for example, the grandchildren of Svetlana Artyukh, you can take poppy seeds, nuts, peeled sunflower seeds, candied fruits.

If you are preparing homemade Easter cakes for the first time, you can experiment and make part of the dough with less flour. "Someone says that the dough for Easter cakes should not be liquid. This is not so, sometimes it is from a more liquid dough that tasty and magnificent pastries are obtained. You can add cocoa here, bake Easter cakes in cupcake molds, decorate with fondant or melted chocolate. At home, trying new things is not forbidden. When I make Easter cakes in the seminary, I adhere to the traditional recipe. While I knead the dough, I bake, I read a prayer. And I always approach my work in a good mood, otherwise nothing will work out, "Svetlana shared the secrets of mastery Artyukh, whose Easter cakes and other pastries are always praised by parishioners.

Alesya PUSHNYAKOVA,

Photo by Alexander KHITROV,

BELTA.