This delicious chocolate Easter bread has 2 names, it's called Paska in the southern Russia and Ukraine but it's called Kulich in central Russia and the rest of Russia. This is not to be confused with another festive Easter dish called Paskha (Пасха), which is made with tvorog (farmer's cheese). As easy as it may sound and look, rising is the most time consuming part of the making. Due to sugar and yolks, the rising process, making the rising time go by very slow (even if it's rising in a very warm place). But don't fret it's all worth the labor if you want extremely fluffy results. I wanted to do a chocolate version and add spices and dried fruit in there to make it more festive. This bread isn’t super sweet, but feel free to add more sugar if you wish.
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Marla says hi. Episode
of my Easter mini series
and today I want to show
you how to make chocolate
cottage cheese pastel bread.
So pastel bread is really, really traditional, very delicious in
all Eastern European countries,
Russian-speaking countries and it's basically brioche type of bread
stuffed with different dried berries, raisins,
cranberries, mini oranges and lemon peels and
oh my god it's so good and if you like bread
and you want to make something festive
and delicious then this recipe you're gonna love it
as well especially because
it's chocolate too and the cottage cheese
inside makes it really really creamy and
smooth and I think it's something different you know you don't have to
always have just the traditional white one it's nice
to have the chocolate one
as well and I've also added some cocoa nibs inside
for an extra crunch and the
cake itself is not very sweet
so if you like it very very sweet you can always
add a bit more sugar or actually you can eat it with jam
and butter on its own as
well but it's very rich chocolate flavor
not sweet at all well a little bit a
little bit and yeah I hope you enjoyed
this video guys thank you so much for
watching don't forget to subscribe we're
so close to 100,000 subscribers it would
absolutely mean the world to me if you do subscribe
and share the videos and
and hopefully make more recipes
as well let's get started first thing we're gonna do is soak
our raisins and cranberries and our orange
and lemon peel with some rum or cognac you know how
to do this if you don't want to you can just soak them
in orange juice for example or lemon juice
just mix everything together and make sure they're nice
and soaked and you want to set them aside for
a few hours this can be done you know a day in advance
or so next we're going to make our starter
so into your warm milk add yeast
and i'm using instant fast action yeast so that means it's very
quick and just raises a lot faster and better
then add sugar mix everything together and then
you want to add flour so mix everything together until it's nice
and smooth and we're going to
place this mixture away to prove.
I like to wrap it in cling film and set it aside for about 45
minutes or so. Now you can see it has proved.
It's pretty much doubled in size and you will see these
little sort of bubbles on top.
Now it's time to drain our raisin mix. So just place them on a
paper towel and just soak up any excess moisture.
You can do this several times and once they're dry
it's really important that we're going to add flour
if you don't add flour to the dried fruit
whenever you bake any sort of breads
or brioche type buns they will sink to the bottom so it's
really important that you use flour this way they will stay
in the dough now it's time to make our
dough so add your egg yolks
and sugar into your stand mixer you can also do this with just a
normal whisk and we're going to whisk this for a couple
of minutes until the eggs are nice and
fluffy about 5 to 8 minutes.
I also like to add some vanilla extract but this is
completely optional.
The eggs should become sort of light and fluffy and
you'll see they will change in color.
As some of you know I have launched my
online cooking school where you can learn how
to make the most amazing cakes
ever. I've got level one,
two and three for beginners to advanced and you'll be
able to learn the beautiful mousse cakes.
You can also do this as a gift for somebody who loves
cooking and baking.
I think it's an awesome present and of course if you wanted to learn
yourself. Each course has over 20 to 40 video lessons
in there where I teach you all the skills,
different cakes and unique designs.
We also have a Facebook community group for all the bakers that
join my course and you will have
my unlimited support throughout teaching and learning. I really
hope to see you in my online cooking school
and if you have any more questions then leave the
comments down below. Here I have some cottage cheese.
This is dry cottage cheese called Tvarog.
You can also use farmer's cheese or quark.
It's completely up to you or even ricotta and you just
want to blitz this through until it's nice and smooth.
So you can also use cream cheese as well
if you don't have cottage cheese.
So just with a hand blender puree the mixture through just to
make sure it's nice and smooth.
It should look just like that and then we're going to add this
into our egg mixture and then I'm going to add melted butter
and it's already been cooled down
so make sure you melt your butter before you add it into your dough
and you're going to whisk this
for several minutes until it's nice and creamy.
Then I'm going to add my yeast mixture that has
been proving. So add all of that together.
Next you want to combine your cocoa powder together
with your flour. I'm adding some cinnamon,
some mixed spice and a bit of nutmeg. You can use any
spices that you like here to be honest as this bread can
be as festive as you like. Mix everything
together until it's nice and mixed
and we're going to add all of it into our dough. So just add all
of the mix together with salt as well into your bowl
and make sure you change it to a dough hook
and mix everything together until your dough sort
of starts to come together. So just keep mixing
until it's nice and even and very very smooth and elastic.
You will see it will start to fall off
your dough hook. If you don't have a KitchenAid you can
do this by hand. This will probably take
about 10 to 15 minutes of kneading
so just be patient and then once your dough is done
it's very very sticky you might want to flour the surface
and just stretch out the dough
and then I'm going to add my dried fruit mix inside
and then I'm adding also some cacao nibs
these are dark chocolate cacao nibs they're not sweet
so they do add that extra crunch and
chocolatey sort of taste to this dough.
So just mix all of that together. You kind of fold it in
inside and then you want to just kind of use your hands
and make sure that all your dried fruit and
cacao nibs have been sort of evenly distributed.
You might need to add some more flour on top and
on the side and just keep kneading it until you feel
that they are all mixed in properly and it's
nice and soft don't add too much more flour as it will become too rough
but just the enough amount
to make sure it's all nice
and mixed in you want to add a bit of oil into your bowl and then place
your dough inside and we're going to cover it in cling film
and put it to proof for about one hour
or maybe even two depending on your kitchen you want
the dough to raise for about one and a half
to two times more now you can see my dough
has risen it looks really really
nice and chocolatey and puffy
and you can see all the dried fruit has spread
out in different locations
which is good exactly what we wanted take your dough
sort of punch it through you want to get rid of any air for now
and at this point
it's become really really nice
and easy to work with and I'm gonna divide this
between two um two paper sort of molds you can get these online
and i'll leave all the measurements
how big they were just in case
because if your molds are smaller or bigger then you might want
to add less or more so this is really important
so just add those in and press kind of inside
make sure it's nice and sticky there you
then want to place these again to proof for about one hour
or so until they raise almost to the very top
and there they are guys they have risen pretty much
all the way to the top my molds are probably a bit too big
and now it's time to bake these
oh my gosh i can't wait it's been a while
so once they're baked you'll first of all you'll smell
them and then you will see they'll come out nice
and beautiful and chocolatey i do like to eat them
straight away as they are so so moist and delicious when they're hot.
You can take off the
paper wrapping around and there you go guys look
at that. I'm also using some pink icing so just
spread that around and this is just icing sugar with milk.
You can use whatever icing that you
want on your pasta bread
and i'm decorating it with some shaved chocolate bits as well
and look at that this is our delicious chocolate pasta bread
and i'm gonna of course show you how
it looks inside as this is the most important just look
at that all the fruit is separated
it's very very soft when you press on it
and it's very chocolatey it's really really delicious sort
of spicy, spiced bread.
Very, very nice with jam or butter and perfect for Easter. I hope
you enjoyed this video, guys. Thanks so much for watching.
