Custard cake with orange zest. Easter cake with raisins and orange zest in the oven

These Easter cakes And I will repeat this. The recipe does not contain step-by-step pictures, but I really want to show it to you, because the Easter cakes turn out incredibly tasty, and they are easy to prepare. Moreover, you need to cook Easter cakes today. Although, of course, there are many who will start preparing for the Easter table a little later. For this occasion, I will make you a selection of Easter recipes from Kalabasa, and I will also show and tell you how to set the table and many more wonderful ideas for festive, bright decor. If you have any questions or, God forbid, problems, write them immediately in the comments, I will try to answer right away!

Needed (for 2 small Easter cakes):
1 egg
2 yolks
75 g butter
125 ml warm milk
100 g sugar
200 g flour
1 teaspoon dry yeast
0.5 tsp salt
zest of one orange
0.5 teaspoon ground cinnamon
0.5 teaspoon ground nutmeg
6 carnation stars

Preparation time: 4 hours 30 minutes (mostly for proofing the dough).

The bowl in which you will knead the dough must be large so that the dough has enough room to rise well. And one more thing: those who have orange sugar from, just use it without adding additional zest)

Grind the cloves into powder in a mortar and then mix it with cinnamon and nutmeg.

Break the eggs into a large bowl and add the yolk (use the white for glaze, whipping it into a thick foam with powdered sugar). Lightly whisk the eggs to combine the white and yolk. Pour in milk, add salt, sugar and yeast. Mix everything so that there are no lumps.

Now add softened butter, sifted flour and spices (cloves, cinnamon and nutmeg) to the mixture. If you use regular sugar, then at this stage add orange zest to the dough, grating it on a fine, fine grater. Replace the dough. It will be soft, elastic and will smell delicious.

Now cover the bowl with the dough with a damp towel and set aside in a warm place for 2 hours or until the dough has doubled in size.

While the dough is rising, prepare the baking pans. Grease their sides and bottom with butter.

Knead the risen dough again. Place the dough into the mold\moulds. Cover the molds again with a damp towel and put them in a warm place for 1.5 hours.

At this time, preheat the oven to 180C.

When the dough rises again, brush the surface of the Easter cake with milk or lightly beaten yolk (when you beat the yolk, add 1-2 tablespoons of water to it so that the yolk does not curl).

Now carefully transfer the molds with the dough into the already preheated oven, without slamming the door, close it and bake the cakes for 30-40 minutes.

Leave the finished cakes to cool in the switched off oven. And then, once cooled down, brush them with glaze (powdered sugar mixed with lemon juice (for a 250 g bag, 6-7 tablespoons of lemon juice), whipped egg white with powdered sugar (for 1 white, 1 tablespoon of powdered sugar) or melted chocolate like I did.

Various decorations are not prohibited)

Update. I decided to add here more photos of Easter cakes that Katya, our regular author and reader, prepared according to this recipe)

Juicy and unusually aromatic orange cake will become the main delicacy on the Easter table, and you will probably want to repeat this recipe next year, because homemade cakes will be strikingly different from store-bought ones. Orange Easter cake will remain soft, aromatic and incredibly tasty throughout the Easter week. You can use it to make wonderful sweet crackers in the oven or croutons, serving the dessert with jam or preserves. A very important secret: rub the peel only to the white layer, and not with it, and add it only to the suitable dough so that the aroma does not “ferment” along with it. You can decorate baked goods with candied orange peel, icing sugar or just powdered sugar, etc.

Ingredients

• 2 oranges
• 30 g fresh yeast
• 5–6 chicken eggs
• 2 cups sugar
• 120 g butter
• 100 g raisins
• 4 cups wheat flour
• 300 ml milk
• 0.5 tsp. salt
• a little refined vegetable oil for greasing the molds

Preparation

1. Heat the milk in a saucepan or microwave to 30–35 degrees, but no more, so as not to neutralize the yeast, which dies at higher temperatures.

2. Pour the milk into a deep bowl or small basin, as there will be a lot of dough and the dough will greatly increase in size. Add 2-3 tbsp. l. sugar, salt, puree fresh yeast in milk. If using dry ones, add them together with the flour. Mix the contents of the container thoroughly.

3. Add 1.5 cups of flour. If you have time, sift it before adding. Knead the sponge dough - it has a consistency similar to pancake dough. Cover the container with a towel or scarf and place it in a warm place for 40–50 minutes.

4. After the specified time, the dough will double in size.

5. Scald the oranges with boiling water for a couple of seconds, dry with a paper towel and grate their peel (without the white layer), turning it into zest.

6. Break the eggs into the bowl of a food processor.

7. Add the remaining granulated sugar and beat until fluffy at high speed for about 4-5 minutes.

8. Melt the butter, but not to a boil, so that the hot dough does not settle.

9. Pour the airy egg foam into a container with the dough, add melted butter there.

10. Add orange zest and mix everything carefully.

INGREDIENTS

• flour 1 kg
• milk 300 ml
• sugar 400 g
• vanilla extract 1-2 tsp.
• butter 350 g
• eggs 5 pcs.
• egg yolks 3 pcs.
• salt 1 pinch(s)
• fresh yeast 50 g
• orange 1 pc.
• dried cranberries 100 g
• for glaze:
• powdered sugar 200 g
• egg whites 3 pcs.
• lemon juice 1/2 tsp.

STEP-BY-STEP COOKING RECIPE

Pour rum over the cranberries and leave for 10 hours. If you plan to treat children, you can replace the rum with orange juice or regular boiled water.

Place the dough. Heat the milk to 30-35 degrees. Crumble the yeast, add 2 tbsp. sugar and 3 tbsp. flour. Stir, cover with a towel and let stand for 15 minutes.

While the dough is rising, grind and lightly beat the softened butter with the remaining sugar, add vanilla extract.

Beat the eggs and yolks into the butter mixture one at a time, mixing thoroughly each time. Add zest, stir.

Combine the dough and butter-egg mixture. Add sifted flour in small portions. Add cranberries (if soaked in alcohol or juice, then along with the liquid, if in water, drain the water).

Knead a loose dough. Cover with a damp towel and let rise in a warm place until the dough doubles in size by 2-2.5 times. Gently knead and let rise again.

Grease the Easter cake molds with oil and fill them 2/3 full, let them rest for 30 minutes. Bake in an oven preheated to 180 degrees for 45-55 minutes or until you test for a dry knitting needle (i.e., if you insert a wooden skewer into the middle of the cake and then pull it out, it will be dry, without any remaining dough).

For the glaze, beat the whites with a mixer with powdered sugar and lemon juice until thick and glossy. Cover the cooled but still warm cakes with glaze and decorate.

Helpful advice

Add flour in parts. I noticed that sometimes it takes a little less flour, sometimes a little more. It depends on the humidity in the kitchen. If you “tighten” the dough, the cake will be too dense and will not be soft the next day.

The preparation of any lush Easter cake begins with the activation of yeast. Pour dry yeast into a small bowl or deep plate, add a teaspoon of sugar and a tablespoon of flour. With these components, the yeast will “start” faster and more efficiently! Mix these three ingredients.

Add 3 tablespoons of warm milk to the dry ingredients (you can use unboiled milk, but for yeast it should never be cold), stir and leave in a warm place for 10-15 minutes. During this time, the yeast mass will become fluffy and rise noticeably.

Sift 500 g of flour into a large bowl or saucepan (for example, a 5-liter saucepan), add sugar to it and stir with a spoon.

Add the risen yeast mixture to the flour and mix lightly (it won’t be possible to mix well at this stage - there is too little moisture).

Add the remaining warm milk to the pan with the flour mixture and stir with a spoon.

Separate the yolks from the whites. Do not put the egg whites in the refrigerator: after cooling, they will not whip well for the glaze. Add the yolks to the dough, stir with a spoon, then add three whole eggs and stir again.

Rinse the raisins and steam them - pour boiling water over them so that each raisin spreads out. Meanwhile, grate the skins of two oranges using the finest grater to “extract” the zest. Add orange zest to the dough and add vanilla sugar. The aromatic additives are already in the dough: now you need to knead it again with a spoon.

At the very end, you should add raisins and butter to the Easter dough. Drain the water from the raisins and dry the berries, and melt the butter and cool to a warm (not hot) temperature. Then add these ingredients to the dough and stir with a spoon.

Next, knead the dough by hand, gradually adding additional flour to it. The orange cake dough should be moderately sticky, so don't add too much flour. When the mass is soft and the butter-coated raisins “jump” out of the dough, grease your hands with vegetable oil and smooth out the top of the dough. Cover the pan with a cotton kitchen towel and leave in a warm place for about 3 hours to allow the dough to rise.

When the dough has more than doubled in size, you can begin to form the Easter cakes themselves.

Divide the dough into the molds, carefully rolling small balls from this mass. The dough should fill about a third of the pan space. Next, place the molds in a warm place and wait about another half hour for the dough to rise in them (it should fill almost the entire space). Preheat the oven to 180 degrees and place the Easter cakes in it one by one: send those in which the dough has already risen sufficiently first.

How long does it take to bake Easter cakes? Baking time depends on your oven and the size of the baked goods. The smallest Easter cakes take 15 minutes to prepare, while larger ones take about an hour. Remove the finished cakes from the oven, cool and remove from the molds.

To prepare Easter, you will need a small Easter box. It can be made of wood or plastic. The inside of the bean bag must be lined with a double layer of gauze so that the free edges of the gauze hang outward.

Now let's prepare the necessary ingredients.

First, prepare the orange caramel. Remove the zest from the orange. This can be done with a special grater or zest knife. If you do not have these devices, you can also grate the zest using a regular grater. Make sure that it is the zest that is removed, without the white shell, which is bitter. Then put 50 g of brown sugar, zest and 1 tbsp of water in a preheated frying pan. Do not stir the mixture; heat until the sugar dissolves.

When the mixture starts to bubble, turn off the heat. Orange caramel is ready. Carefully transfer the caramel to a clean plate. Be careful, she's very hot. Once the caramel has cooled, place it and the roasted almonds in a blender and, with a couple of presses of the pulse button, grind the nuts into small pieces. Don't overdo it; the almonds shouldn't turn to dust.

Separate the whites from the yolks. Beat the yolks with brown sugar with a mixer or whisk until it becomes a thick white cream. Pour the cream into a small saucepan, add vanilla sugar, and bring the cream to a boil. Carefully pour the yolk mixture into the boiled cream and stir with a whisk until the cream mixture thickens. Remove from heat and set aside.

Melt the butter on the stove or in the microwave. Beat cottage cheese with butter. If you have cottage cheese with grains, be sure to grind it through a sieve. Unaesthetic grains can ruin not only the appearance, but also the taste of the dish.

Add the creamy yolk mixture to the whipped cottage cheese and beat again. Add the prepared mixture of nuts and orange caramel. Stir.

Place the cottage cheese in the prepared pan. Cover the bottom of the Easter with the hanging edges and place a weight on top. The weight is needed so that the excess moisture that is in the cottage cheese comes out of the dessert, and the Easter is well compressed. Place the Easter in a deep container to allow the whey to drain there.

Place the structure in the refrigerator overnight. In the morning, remove the weight, carefully pull the edges of the gauze and remove the Easter from the bean bag. Turn the Easter cake over onto a plate and remove the gauze. Festive Easter with almonds and orange caramel is ready!