Why are Easter cakes baked for Easter? What is the meaning of tradition, the sacrament of preparation. The wealth of Easter baked goods What can you bake for Easter besides Easter cakes?
Easter baking differs from any other in its beauty and design features. This could be icing sugar, cookies in the shape of eggs painted with colored fondant, Easter bunnies in the form of buns, cupcakes, and pastries. Or pies with an unusual filling, which is visible in the cross section.
The five most commonly used ingredients in Easter baking recipes are:
All Easter baking recipes must have step by step photos so that even a beginner can cope with the cooking process. In fact, despite the apparent complexity, it is quite simple not only to bake various products, but also to decorate them.
For example, a bright and beautiful carved ring pie, in the center of which painted eggs are placed. It is prepared on yeast dough with a juicy filling of poppy seeds, walnuts, and dried apricots. You can wrap the filling in a roll or tube, roll it into a ring and make light cuts on the sides. So that they open not before, but during baking.
Gingerbread or oval-shaped cookies look very cool on the table. You can paint them with colored icing with your children, it will turn out friendly and fun. The same with dough bunnies, sheep and other cute little animals. Use your imagination, imagination, and you can create confectionery masterpieces without leaving the kitchen))
Five of the fastest Easter baking recipes:
In our country, Easter is often limited to preparing Easter cakes or Easter cottage cheese. Many people love collapsible pies - those in which the pieces are easily separated from each other and do not get your hands dirty. Everyone can look like a small Easter cake. And also a braid or braid made of dough, decorated with colored eggs and tied with a real ribbon.
There are special Easter baskets that are made from baked goods. different types, decorating with flowers, grass, artificial decorations. And then they give it to friends or put it in a prominent place in the house to imbue it with the spirit of the great Easter.
Easter for Christians is the biggest religious holiday, with many traditions associated with it. One of them is to prepare Easter cottage cheese, bake Easter cakes and paint eggs. Not a single Easter Sunday passes without these Easter attributes. But Easter cakes and Easter cakes were not always prepared for Christ’s Sunday. How did the custom come about and Why do they bake Easter cakes for Easter? ?
Easter cake
Easter cake, like cottage cheese Easter and painted eggs, are obligatory ritual attributes of Christian Easter. Kulich is a Slavic rich ritual bread of round or oval shape, which is blessed in the church before being served on the Easter table.
The word "Kulich" (from Greek - "pretzel") has ecclesiastical origin. Easter baked goods are made from yeast dough. The size and shape of Easter cakes vary, mostly cylindrical, but the product must be tall. Catholics, in addition to yeast Easter cakes, make shortbread “babas”. Raisins and spices (vanilla, nutmeg or cardamom), candied fruits, nuts or just fruits, the top is decorated with a glaze of egg white whipped with sugar, powdered sugar, or the letters “XB” are depicted.
The preparation of Easter cakes begins on Maundy Thursday, and on Holy Saturday, before Easter Sunday, the finished Easter cakes are blessed in the church. For Orthodox Christians, this is the most important, revered and indispensable rite. After the service, the Easter cake was broken at the Easter meal, shared among all those present.
Ritual meaning
As a prototype Easter cake is church leavened bread (artos), which symbolized the victory of Christ over death, the triumph of life, the replacement Old Testament New. Believers believe that those who eat ritual artos draw closer to Christ and conquer illnesses.
Why are Easter cakes baked for Easter? ? According to biblical tradition, after the death of Christ the apostles always gathered at the refectory table, leaving free the central place where Jesus once sat with them. To show that after death and resurrection Christ was invisibly present among them, an arthos decorated with a cross and a crown of thorns was placed in the center of the table. This is where the tradition of bringing special bread to church, symbolizing Easter, came from.
The cylindrical shape of the Easter cake represents the shape of the shroud in which Christ was wrapped after the crucifixion.
Over time, tall cylindrical Easter cakes decorated with icing became the traditional Easter bread in every family, symbolizing the invisible presence of Christ.
Biblical tradition says that after the crucifixion of Christ the apostles ate unleavened bread, and after his resurrection - yeast bread (leavened bread). Traditional Easter cakes today are made from rich dough with the addition of a large number of eggs and butter. It is customary to cut Easter cakes horizontally into circles. The top of the Easter cake was kept until the Easter cake was finished.
Today, before Easter, a lot of ready-made Easter cakes are sold, but it is important that housewives prepare this ritual bread themselves. After all, only the warm aroma of homemade baked goods, prepared with love and prayers, can create a good and blissful Easter mood.
The prepared Easter cakes were eaten throughout Easter week, and then taken to the cemetery on Memorial Sunday.
Easter signs
There are many signs associated with Easter cake. It is believed that if the Easter cake is a success, then happiness and prosperity will await the house throughout the year.
If it cracks or falls apart, expect trouble.
Other attributes of the Easter table
In addition to Easter cakes, the traditional Easter table is never complete without colored eggs and Easter cottage cheese. It was made from pureed cottage cheese with sugar and eggs with the addition of butter, sour cream or cream. The traditional shape of Easter cottage cheese is a truncated tetrahedral pyramid, which symbolizes Golgotha or the tomb from which Christ rose. To prepare cottage cheese Easter, use a special Easter pan. The prepared curd mass is placed in a mold and left for a day in a cold place to drain the whey. On the inside of the edges of the form there is usually a cross, spears or canes, and the letters of the greeting “Christ is Risen!” (“ХВ”), grape bunches and flowers, symbolizing the suffering of Christ and his resurrection. All these images are imprinted on the finished Easter.
It is customary to eat cottage cheese Easter spread on a piece of Easter cake.
Painted eggs, which Christians traditionally exchange or simply give to each other, uttering the joyful exclamation “Christ is Risen!”, also serve as a symbol of the grave and the rebirth of life.
Slavic ritual tradition
The history of Easter cake is older than Christianity itself; its history is deeply rooted in the pagan past.
The Slavs, like many peoples, had a custom of baking ritual bread in the spring and sacrificing it to the earth. So the pagans performed a ritual dedicated to the gods of fertility, in the hope of getting a rich harvest. Worshiping their gods, the ancient Slavs baked Easter cakes several times a year on the biggest holidays associated with the change of seasons - New Year, the arrival of spring or the autumn harvest.
Slavic ritual bread, kulich, was usually made from leavened dough and baked before sowing. Bread was sacrificed to the ancestors, the earth and the elements so that the land would be fertile and the harvest rich.
With the advent of Christianity, the tradition of baking Easter cakes, like many other pagan traditions, merged in the popular consciousness and we now perceive Christian traditions and are actively used in religious rituals.
Spring is a time of renewal and awakening of Mother Nature, and it is not for nothing that the main Christian holiday is always celebrated in the spring. The celebration of the bright Resurrection of Christ has its own traditions, and one of the most enduring is ritual dishes for the festive table. Traditional Easter baked goods are Easter cheese and Easter cake, which symbolize the tomb of Jesus Christ and his body, and colored eggs speak of shed blood. There is probably not a single family where they do not prepare a single symbolic dish for this bright holiday, and every housewife tries to diversify the menu.
Therefore, the main baked goods for Easter are Easter cakes, and Easter cakes are an incredibly tasty curd dessert, the main feature of which is the density and shape of the curd mass. Very often the concepts of these ritual dishes are confused, so we will try to clarify their fundamental difference.
Easter
Orthodox Christians call Easter cheesecake, which can be prepared in several ways:
- Easter without baking is prepared from fresh cottage cheese, with the addition of cream or sour cream, butter, eggs, raisins, candied fruits and other additives. Such pies are completely ready for consumption only after squeezing out excess liquid, so they are placed under a press for several hours. Traditional Easter desserts made from cottage cheese should be shaped like a truncated pyramid (quadrangular or rounded).
- Custard Easter is a type of cottage cheese pie without baking, but the cottage cheese itself is brought to a boiling point (brewed), then the cooled mass is mixed with various additives. The curd mixture is placed in a mold with a sieve and the resulting curd is allowed to drain and compact.
- Baked Easter is a cottage cheese pie baked in the oven at low temperature for at least 1 hour. Here dried fruits, candied fruits, nuts, etc. are also added to the cottage cheese.
The general requirement for traditional Easter desserts is to thoroughly grind the cottage cheese in order to obtain complete homogeneity of the fermented milk product.
Kulichi
Kulich is an Easter butter bread baked in special cylindrical molds. The top of the Easter cake is decorated with a cap of whipped egg whites or covered with glaze, and sprinkled with multi-colored colored millet. This one is traditional appearance Easter cake is usually called “Easter”. But this is not entirely correct, as you understand.
All Easter cakes have a special recipe, which includes yeast, butter (margarine), sugar and a wide variety of additives. As a rule, the recipe is designed so that the rich bread does not go stale for a long time and has an exclusively Easter aroma that cannot be confused with any other! To obtain such a high-quality product, the dough should be kneaded for a very long time - for uniform porosity and long-term softness of the cake.
In addition to paskas and Easter cakes, each housewife has her own baking recipes for Easter: rolls, babas, cookies, muffins and gingerbread.
Easter women
“Baba” - a special type of baked goods with big amount beaten eggs. Babas turn out to be very fluffy, loose and unusually aromatic products. The peculiarity of such desserts is that they practically do not go stale for a long time. It is because of this that they are becoming more and more popular among home cooks every year.
Butter rolls
As one of the favorite options for Easter baked goods, rolls with poppy seeds, raisins, nuts, dried fruits and cottage cheese have the right to take their rightful place on the festive table on the bright day of the Resurrection of Christ. Rolls can be made from either rich or salty dough. Rolls with various meat, mushroom or fish fillings are served as a snack, and sweet rolls are served as an option for Easter pastries.
Cookies, gingerbread and cupcakes
When there are children in the family, baking small items with holiday symbols for them is a great way to show the children that their tastes are also taken into account. Most housewives bake small Easter cakes for their children so that the little ones feel involved in the general celebration of the Resurrection of Christ.
But, if instead of traditional pies you make gingerbread or cookies, pour them with icing of different colors and decorate them with bright millet - would such delicacies be superfluous in the holiday menu? Won't adults also enjoy the variety of these delicious flour dishes?
Whatever baking recipes you choose for Easter, all these products have one thing in common - their bright design and decoration in a recognizable style: whipped egg whites, milk icing, colored sprinkles and other decorations.
Have a delicious Easter week!
Why are Easter cakes baked for Easter? Many people, raised in the traditions of Christianity from childhood, do not even think about where this custom came from, because Easter cake has always been the main decoration of the Easter table, along with Easter cottage cheese and colored eggs.
However, if we turn to history, it turns out that the custom of baking Easter cakes initially appeared not in the Christian, but in the pagan tradition - long before the advent of the Christian cult, and they were baked not once, but three times a year, in honor of the onset of holidays that were significant for the ancients Slavs When did the merger of paganism and Christianity take place? This article is devoted to finding an answer to this question.
With the adoption of Christianity and the beginning of religious rites in the image and likeness of the sacraments performed by the Greek Church, a huge number of words borrowed from Greek language. The word &kulich& is also of Greek origin, meaning & round bread&.
What events are associated with this attribute of the bright holiday?
With coming Christian traditions In Rus', traditional Slavic ritual bread began to be called kulich and was an obligatory attribute of the Easter meal. It is baked from yeast dough with the addition of candied fruits and raisins and has the shape of a tall cylinder, decorated with sugar icing. To make it more decorative, the Old Slavonic Easter cakes were sprinkled with dyed millet. Nowadays, decorative sprinkles are used for this purpose.
Passionate (Great) Saturday preceding Easter is the time for the consecration of Easter cakes, Easter and painted eggs (the question: & why do they paint eggs for Easter? & again refers us to the need to turn to historical reference books).
In every Russian region they used it for baking. different shapes. For the most part, the Easter cake resembled tall church bread - artos, although Vologda peasants baked it in the form of an open berry pie.
Whatever Easter pies are: large or small, narrow or wide, they always have a round shape. This is due to the memory that Christ was dressed in a round shroud.
The fact that Easter bread is baked from very sweet and rich dough indicates the festivity of this dish, dedicated to a bright event in the history of all mankind. Before the great sacrifice, Jesus and his apostles knew only the taste of bread baked from unleavened dough. After the miraculous resurrection, bread made from unusually tasty, leavened dough appeared on their table.
The Easter cakes were modest: the dough from which they were baked contained a huge amount of butter and eggs. There are known recipes according to which a hundred eggs were added to two kilograms of wheat flour.
After the seven weeks of Lent, a small piece of pie was the best food, capable of both creating a feeling of a joyful holiday and preparing the body of a fasting parishioner for a rich festive feast.
They broke their fast (that is, they ate light food for the first time after fasting) with the iconic bread only after the Easter church service.
Ritual bread, baked from sour dough, was initially sacrificed to mother earth, ancestors, or natural elements. The purpose of such a sacrifice was the desire to receive their support, thereby ensuring a rich harvest and soil fertility. Ritual loaves were baked on the eve of sowing.
The prototypes of future Easter cakes were initially baked twice a year: at the beginning of spring (marking the beginning of field work) and at the end of autumn (to mark the harvest). In Peter’s times, they began to be baked in winter, in connection with the onset of the new calendar year.
Such frugality was explained by the rather high cost of the resulting product, since their production requires a large number of valuable and expensive products. In addition, baking technology is characterized by great complexity and duration of the process itself, which makes them exclusively an attribute of a solemn and significant feast.
For some time, holiday bread was used in pagan cult rites along with the practice of Christian customs, as a result of which there was an imperceptible interpenetration of the two cultural traditions. Over time, the pagan meaning of the ritual was forgotten, giving way to the Christian meaning associated with the story of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Why do baked goods appear specifically on the Resurrection of Christ?
The Christian meaning of the tradition of baking Easter cakes for the holiday is associated with the ancient legend according to which the resurrected Jesus Christ visited the apostles eating. From then on, they always left a place for Jesus in the center of the table, where freshly baked bread was always waiting for him.
Over time, on Easter, a church tradition arose of baking special bread - artos (which is a whole prosphora) and leaving it on a special table, in imitation of the actions of Christ's disciples.
On all days of Easter week, artos is an indispensable attribute of religious processions held around the temple. On Saturday of Holy Week (after reading a prayer for the fragmentation of the artos), the clergy divide it into parts and distribute it to parishioners after the end of the church service as a shrine. The distribution of artos is accompanied by kissing the cross.
One of the postulates of Christian teaching is the idea that each family is a small church, which on the bright holiday of Easter should have its own artos. The role of such an artos was played by the Easter cake.
Thus, the presence of Easter bread on the table became a symbol of the invisible presence of the Lord in every home. On the table of every Orthodox Christian on this day there must be Easter cake and Easter. The Church assists believers in every possible way, taking part in their sanctification.
Kulichik symbolically means the bread broken by the risen Jesus during the meal of the apostles.
Holiday bread is the distinguishing feature between the Passover of Jews and Christians. During the Jewish Passover, only unleavened bread is present on the tables of believers. At this moment, leavened bread is strictly prohibited. Orthodox Christians celebrate Easter by feasting on delicious butter pies.
When placing the dough and kneading the dough, it is necessary to maintain purity of thoughts and a high spiritual attitude, so the housewife at this moment should read a prayer and turn to the Lord with a request to help her prepare a successful Easter cake.
It has long been believed that the type of Easter cake determines the well-being of the entire family for the whole year. The even and smooth surface of the finished Easter cake means that family affairs will turn out well. If the cake did not rise well or cracks appeared on its surface, this foreshadows many upcoming disappointments and losses.
Easter cakes are baked on Maundy Thursday, in an atmosphere of comfort, cleanliness and order. A housewife who baked in the old days was sure to wear a clean shirt.
When baking Easter cakes in the house, it was forbidden not only to knock, but also to raise your voice, or to open doors and windows.
In order to prevent the freshly baked pie from settling, it was placed on a down pillow until it cooled completely. During this time, all household members were removed from the kitchen to prevent the occurrence of drafts and extraneous air flows accompanying any movement.
The cake is cut not lengthwise, but crosswise, into rings. If necessary (if the Easter cake is large in diameter), these rings can be cut radially.
The top part of the Easter cake is saved until the last moment (until the last piece of pulp is eaten), using it as a lid that protects the tender pulp of the Easter cake from drying out.
Easter cakes are baked taking into account the number of members in the family. The cake must be distributed throughout Easter week: Each family member should receive one piece daily.
Unlike European varieties Easter bread (for example, English muffin or Austrian Reindling), the Russian version of Easter cake is much lighter both in structure and in the degree of absorption by the human body.
The unique combination of richness and lightness of Easter cake makes it an indispensable product that promotes a gradual and safe transition from observing strict fasting to eating light food.
The leaven for Russian Easter cake is made a week before Easter, and the dough is traditionally made on Maundy Thursday.
Flour intended for Easter cake is sifted at least twice: this helps saturate it with oxygen.
The tub with the created dough is lined with pillows to prevent it from sagging, and during its proofing, loud conversations and walking around the room in heavy shoes are unacceptable.
In the room where Easter cakes are prepared, there must be a constant air temperature, excluding even the slightest temperature changes.
A festive Orthodox Easter cake is unthinkable without prayers read over it.
Not a single Easter is complete without Easter cakes - these delicious, bright and fragrant masterpieces of home-baked goods represent not only a symbol of the resurrection of Christ, but also a symbol of the rebirth of Mother Nature to life. At the same time, Easter cakes prepared according to old recipes are especially popular - of course, sometimes you have to tinker with them quite a bit, but the result is worth it!
Fans of original baked goods will certainly appreciate the delicious French-style cake made from brioche dough - its unusual taste will impress even the most demanding gourmands!
And novice housewives can safely try making a wonderful sour cream and honey cake - it is not only incredibly easy to prepare, but also turns out surprisingly tasty and extremely aromatic.
Easter cupcakes
Cupcakes are a great opportunity to diversify the Easter table or even replace traditional Easter cakes. Easter cupcakes decorated with multi-colored confectionery sprinkles with honey icing and raisins will give a great mood to both children and adults!
The spectacular English Easter cake "Simnel" will not leave anyone indifferent - in English-speaking countries it is baked as often as traditional Easter cakes. The eleven marzipan balls with which this unusual cupcake is decorated symbolize the eleven apostles (there was no place for the twelfth, Judas, on the surface of the cupcake), and some housewives place another ball in the middle - this ball represents Jesus himself.
Easter pies
Pies are also baked for Easter, and the most popular type of Easter pies is considered to be open pies - the brightest thing an example is the amazingly beautiful Easter mince pie. An unusual filling of minced meat with rosemary and thyme will please everyone!The Blueberry Basket Easter pie will look no less impressive on the table - it will also delight absolutely all the guests!
Easter cookies
Bright Easter cookies would also be very appropriate on the holiday table. Cookies made from quick puff pastry will be especially tasty. And if you are not too lazy to decorate it with mastic, then it will delight everyone gathered at the table with its incredibly original design!Yeast buns
Many housewives are very willing to bake fluffy yeast buns for Easter - such buns are actively used to treat work colleagues, neighbors and acquaintances. There are a huge number of variations of recipes for yeast buns - you can bake them with raisins, poppy seeds, marzipan or sesame seeds, and to make them look more impressive, it is not forbidden to decorate them with chocolate or white icing. Well, if you want something special, it’s time to try baking cute Easter bunnies. Rich sour cream dough, exuding a delightful aroma of orange and vanilla, goes very harmoniously with the exquisite poppy seed filling!Grandmas
Spectacular sweet babkas can instantly decorate even the richest and most sophisticated festive table, including Easter. Well, can anyone resist such bright Easter rum babkas, especially if they are beautifully decorated?Easter bread
You can’t do without bread on Easter, because it’s not for nothing that they say that bread is the head of everything! Agree, both guests and household members will be very pleased to see on the table not simple, but real holiday bread, for example, green Easter bread with soft feta cheese! Try to implement the best German traditions in your kitchen, because this bread is perfect for meat, vegetables, and numerous cold appetizers!
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