The bread symbol of the brightest Christian Easter holiday is a cake. Since ancient times, the custom of the stove has been preserved, and then to consecrate it in the church. Easter bread is an analogue of the church bread. In the old days, the Slavs were wondering: it turned out that the cook was delicious and magnificent - the year would be fertile and rich, but the cracked crust was considered an unkind sign. At the festive table the king's cake was served as follows: the top was cut horizontally, the rest was cut into slices or circles, all members of the family received a generous piece. The remaining cake was covered with a cut top.
The cake has a definite shape and visually resembles a church with domes, it is customary to depict the cross and the letters "XV" on the crust( Christ is Risen).Its furnace is very difficult, this requires the hostess to have a certain skill. Baked cakes according to all rules can be stored for a long time, it does not dry and does not mold.
In all countries, Easter cakes are baked in different ways, but raisins, candied fruits, nuts and various spices are added to the dough, giving the baking a special, unique taste. Used a lot of butter, eggs. Catholics bake cakes not only from yeast dough, but also from sand, they are called "women".
Each housewife has her own recipe for making festive muffins - on sour cream, on butter and even with cognac. .. And how to decorate the baking depends on the imagination and fiction. Pour cakes with protein, chocolate, lemon glaze, decorate with colorful powder, flowers from culinary mastic.
Secrets of cooking delicious cakes
- The room in which the cake will be baked should be warm and without drafts. Yeast dough very capricious: if you periodically open a window, door or window, it will not rise.
- It is better to use the old pressed yeast in the old way, if they are not there, then dry ones will fit, but they should always be labeled "active".
- You need to sift the flour, but for the best result you need to do this twice. When sifting, the flour is saturated with oxygen, which means that the baking will turn out lush, porous and tender.
- Butter should be freshest. The yellowed, stale or rancid oil will spoil the taste of the product.
- The dough should be tight and elastic, but not too steep, otherwise the cake will quickly harden. And if you do not add flour, the dough will turn out to be liquid and will crawl out in shape, and the cake will be flat.
Prepare a classic king cake according to all the rules
Royal cake is not just a delicious pie, it takes a long time to prepare individual ingredients. If everything is done correctly, carefully following the recipe, the buns will turn out to be tender and airy.
Based on the product standards in this recipe, there should be 3 cakes, each of which will weigh about 700 grams, or one big. 
As a rule, the royal cake is not too sweet, because candied fruits and raisins are used. But those who adore sweet, you can make an exception and add more sugar: not one glass, but one and a half.
Almond should be prepared as follows: nuts pour into boiling water and boil exactly one minute, so that the peel is swollen. With each nut open the pointed tip, press on the nut from the blunt end and squeeze out of the peel. This should be done carefully, as pieces of peel can make the test an ugly shade. Peel the almonds on a baking tray, put in a preheated oven( 100 degrees), hold for 20 minutes. The dried almonds are cooled and ground. 
Ingredients:
- yeast - a package of dry or 50 g of pressed;
- cream( any fat content) - 500 g;
- wheat flour of the highest grade - 1 kg 200 g;
- butter - 1 packet( 200 g);
Yolks 
Flour
- granulated sugar - 1 cup;
- cores of cardamom - 10 pieces;
- egg yolks - 15 pieces;
- nutmeg ground - 1 teaspoon( or 1 whole);
- almonds - one and a half tablespoons;Candied fruits - 3 tablespoons;
- raisins - 3 tablespoons;
Raisins 
Nutmeg 
Fruit candies
- Breadcrumbs white bread crumbs( for sifting the mold) - 2-3 tablespoons.
You will also need:
- form, preferably not new, but proven, tried and tested, so that at the most crucial moment it does not fail;
- foil;
- baking paper.
Foil 
Bakery Paper 
Bakery Form
Preparation:
- Preheat 200 grams of cream in a saucepan over low heat, do not bring to a boil. The product should not be hot, otherwise the yeast will not rise.
- Flour( 2.5 cups) to sift.
- Yeast diluted in cream. If you use compressed yeast, make sure that they are fresh.
- In a large container, prepare the spoon. To do this, mix the flour with the yeast diluted in cream. The pan is covered with a lid and put in a warm place so that the lobster is raised. You can put in the oven, preheated to 35 degrees, or on the stove, and next to the opaque put a basin with boiling water, or just on the table.
- Separate the proteins from the yolks.
- Melt butter, but do not bring to a boil, chill. Connect the yolks and warm oil.
- Add sugar to the mixture and grind. You can do this with a mixer, a halo or a fork.
- Pour rinsed raisins with a glass of boiling water for swelling, leave for 5 minutes. Then throw in a colander, let the water drain and dry on a kitchen towel.
- Finely chop candied fruits.
- Cardamom open, remove the seeds, pound in a mortar or roll out a rolling pin.
- If a whole nutmeg is used, then it must be crushed before it is completely shredded.
- The egg-oil mixture is poured into the raised spoon, add the remaining flour, two cups of cream, cardamom, almonds, raisins, candied fruits and crushed muscat.
- The dough must be carefully kneaded - this is a guarantee that the cake will rise and be lush. Knees make a wooden spatula, and then manually. The table is lightly sprinkled with flour, after which the dough is crushed with both hands for 20 minutes. So that it does not stick to your hands, it is smeared with vegetable oil.
- Ready-made dough is put for raising in a warm place for 1.5-2 hours. For it to rise, a couple of times you need to do the following manipulation: get it out of the pot and throw it hard on the table. This is necessary to make carbon dioxide out of it. The container in which the dough rises, it is necessary to cover with a film, so that it is not faded and does not become covered with a hard crust.
- When the dough slightly rises, the kneading must be repeated, but this will be enough for 5 minutes.
- Put a circle of baking paper on the bottom of the mold in which the cakes will be baked, so that the cake can be removed more easily. Cover the walls with vegetable oil, sprinkle with breadcrumbs.
- The shape is not full, but only half, because the dough will rise. The less you put the dough into a mold, the more splendid and tastier the cake will be.
- Oven to heat up to 160 degrees, put it into shape. To prevent the dough from drying, a bowl of water is placed on the bottom of the oven.
- Put the mold in the oven. During the first 15 minutes, open the door to see how the cake is raised, you can not! After 15 minutes, the temperature is increased to 190 degrees. The top of the cake should be covered with paper or foil, otherwise it can burn out.
- Baking time depends on the size of the cake. Large bake for about an hour, medium in size - 45 minutes, small - half an hour. Check the availability of a toothpick or match. To do this, it is gently stuck in the dough and taken out. If it's dry, then the baking is ready.
- Finished cakes are taken out of the oven and put sideways directly in the form. When the bottom cools down( about 5 minutes later), carefully remove, so that the evaporating moisture does not spoil the "commodity" kind of baking. After cooling, wrap the towel.
How to cook a cake - video
Royal cake on brandy
Ingredients:
- wheat flour - 3 kilograms;
- sour cream - 350 grams;
- sugar - 4-5 tablespoons;
Sour cream 
Sugar 
Milk
- butter - 800 grams;
- milk - 1.2 liters;
- eggs - 15 pieces;
- yeast dry - 30 grams or 100 grams of pressed;
- raisins - half a kilo;
- salt - one and a half teaspoons;
- vanillin sachet;
- nutmeg and saffron - half teaspoon;
- cognac - 1 glass;
Nuts 
Cognac
- ginger - 1 teaspoon;
- nuts( almonds, hazelnuts, walnuts) - 1 glass.
Preparation:
- Yeast dilute with sugar and a little warm water. Put in a warm place.
- Set the spit. In a large saucepan pour warm milk, yeast, half of sugar and 300 grams of butter, which must first be melt and let it brew. Add flour and stir so that there are no lumps, do not whip strongly. Put in a warm place for 1.5-2 hours, as it rises.
- Separate the proteins from the yolks. It should be done carefully, because even if a small part of the yolks gets into the protein, they do not break into a strong foam.
- Yolks grind with sugar( 1 tablespoon) and vanillin. Beat the protein with sugar until the peaks.
- Add the oil, yolks and proteins, sour cream, and pour cognac into the risen spoon. The dough should be thoroughly mixed. Kneading can be done in a bread maker or a food processor, this will greatly facilitate the process.
- Ready to put the dough for 2 hours in a warm place.
- Raisins roll in flour, so that it does not sink to the bottom of the mold, but evenly distributed in the cake, and add to the dough.
- Add also chopped candied fruits, shredded nuts, spices. Thanks to saffron, the dough turns out to be a beautiful golden color.
- Bake the same way as in the previous recipe.
King's cake in the bakery
Often, the hostess has difficulty in selecting the forms in which the cakes will be baked. Burnt or, conversely, unbaked baking will be a great pain. Recently, bread bakers have become very popular, in them the oven cakes are very convenient. They have another undeniable advantage, in comparison with the oven: the dough does not need to be thoroughly and thoroughly mixed, and all that is required is to put all the ingredients in the oven and turn on the desired mode. 
Ingredients:
- dry yeast - 6 grams;
- wheat flour - 325 grams;
- flour improver - 1 teaspoon( you can do without this ingredient, but if you are not sure about the quality of flour, it's better not to risk);Chicken yolks
- - 4-5 pieces;
- sugar - 4 tablespoons;
- butter - 3 tablespoons;
- cream 25% - 200 ml;
Butter 
Cinnamon
- candied fruits, nutmeg, cinnamon - half a teaspoon;
- raisins, nuts to choose from - 40 grams.
Preparation:
- Melt butter, cool.
- Yolks to grind white.
- Put all the products in the bread maker's pan( bucket).
- At the signal add nuts, raisins.
- Choose the program "Wholemeal", the mode is "Baking with raisins", the size is medium.
Decorate the king's cakes
The cakes are ready and slightly cooled, it's time to start decorating them.
The following ingredients are required for the preparation of sugar glaze:
- powdered sugar powder - 1 glass;
- lemon juice - 1 teaspoon;
- water - 4 tablespoons.
Powdered sugar 
Lemon juice 
Water
Preparation:
- Mix all the ingredients, warm, stirring, at a temperature of 40 degrees, make sure that the mixture is not burnt. If the mixture is too liquid, add more powder.
- The consistency of the glaze should look like a thick paint. On cake it is applied with a brush. It dries slowly, so you can put the cake in a slightly heated oven to dry the glaze( but not more than 10 minutes).
- The cake is painted only after the glaze has dried completely.
Protein glaze
Ingredients:
- egg whites - 2 pieces;
- powdered sugar - 1 teaspoon.
Preparation:
- Chilled proteins should be poured into a bowl.
- Add the powdered sugar.
- Beat with a mixer or whisk until strong foam forms.
Chocolate glaze
Ingredients:
- dark chocolate - 100 grams;
- cream - 2 tablespoons.
Cream 
Dark chocolate
Preparation:
- Melt the chocolate.
- Add cream to the mixture, warm until the mixture becomes elastic.
If you replace dark chocolate with white, the glaze will be very tasty. 
You can make chocolate icing in another way, instead of chocolate using cocoa, and instead of cream - condensed milk. Warm the butter( 100 grams), pour cocoa into it( 4 tablespoons).Add condensed milk( 1 jar).
- Many housewives prefer an imperial cake with whipped cream.
- To make colored glaze, you can use berry juice or saffron.
- On the eve of Easter in stores you can buy a lot of beautiful sprinkles that use over the glaze. It can be confectionary crumb of various shades, nuts, almonds, coconut chips, a combination of cinnamon and grated chocolate with candied fruits.
- If the hostess has a confectionery syringe, you can prepare an oil cream and apply various patterns and patterns to the cake with it.
- Paschal ornaments from mastic and marzipan look spectacular and original. They can be bought in a store or made independently.
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