The King of Easter Cuisine

At Easter time in Russia, there are three time-honored traditions: to send charity donations to prisoners, to free birds from their cages, and to bake kulich.

According to Russian custom, any holiday table set for an Easter meal had to be laden with dainties and delicacies. And no wonder -- as a rule, such holidays followed strictly-observed periods of fasting (in this case Lent), by the end of which Russians had every  intention of unburdening their hearts and burdening their stomachs.

The list of Easter dishes recommended by old cookbooks is rich indeed: goose with apples, fried leg of mutton, partridges baked with cranberries, salted mushrooms, jellied fish, painted eggs, curd paskha (a sweet dish with butter and raisins) and many others.

However, kulich was always the king of the feast.

This unusual cake was baked with very rich and distinctive dough. It was cooked only once a year, on a specific day, Good Friday. So don't even try to make a superstitious  Russian babushka bake one at any other time Ñ for her it would be sacrilege.

The night of Easter Saturday and Sunday, kuliches must be consecrated in church. This custom is observed even today Ñ over 50% of Russians bring their kuliches to church at Easter. After the consecration, many of them will then go to the graves of their ancestors to leave a piece of blessed bread there as a symbol of remembrance.

This is a fine example of how pagan and Christian traditions have come together in Russia. Cookery historians believe that kulich originates from the Slavs' ancient pre-Christian ritual bread, known as karavai (round loaf), which symbolized fertility, making it an important element of any wedding.

In the late 17th century, the time of Peter the Great, many elements of western European culture were adopted in Russia, like short dinner jackets, powdered wigs, tobacco pipes, and a whole host of culinary dishes. For example, traditional French and Italian Easter cakes became popular. Kulich borrowed its shape and some of its taste from them, but its size remained purely Russian Ñ it was about twice as large as its western counterparts.

Even during the Soviet years, when official disapproval of Easter celebrations was notorious, kuliches were still tolerated, and you could buy them in almost any bread store. However, as a result of ‘ideological cleansing,’ the cake’s real name was replaced by the euphemism ‘Spring Cake.’

The taste of kulich did not deteriorate substantially in the face of such cleansing, though. And now that ideological  pressure has given way to the laws of marketing, kulich has regained its initial name, and become a genuinely mass product.

But any true Orthodox Christian (and even some less true ones) will tell you that a kulich from a shop does not compare to a home-baked one, just as any handmade item is always better than something mass-produced. And as you will be hard put to find a kulich in a shop outside Russia, you might want to know how it is made.

ÑYelena Utenkova

Here's the Recipe:

First, make the dough. Dissolve the yeast in 1.5 cups of warm milk, add a pound of flour and mix it, making sure no lumps are left; cover it and put the leavened dough in a warm place. When it has grown to double its original size, add the salt, the yolks of five eggs mixed with sugar and vanilla powder, and butter, then stir and add whipped egg whites and the rest of the flour.

The dough should end up being not very thick, but well-stirred and not sticking to the sides of the pot.

Cover the dough and put it in a warm place. After it has risen again and doubled its size, add raisins (washed and dried), candied peel cut into cubes and peeled, finely chopped almonds; then stir these ingredients into the dough and put the dough into moulds. To make a light kulich, fill the moulds only half way.

To prepare the mould (or moulds -- you can use smaller containers and make several cakes at once), cover the bottom with a circular piece of white paper oiled on both sides, butter the sides of the mould and cover them with flour or breadcrumbs. Fill the mould with dough, put in a warm place and cover with a towel. When the dough has risen to 3/4 of the mould's height, smear the top with whipped egg yolk and put in the oven at 325 degrees for 50-60 minutes. While baking, you should turn the kulich mould in the oven very carefully, without shaking it.

To prevent the surface from burning, as soon as it becomes a nice, golden brown, cover it with a circular piece of white paper dipped in water. You can check to see if the kulich is ready by poking it with a thin knife -- if the  blade  is dry, the kulich is ready, but if the blade has dough on it, the kulich needs more time in the oven.

After cooling the kulich, you can cover it with icing or crushed nuts.

Ingredients:

1 lb. flour

1.5 cups of milk

6 eggs

10 oz. butter or margarine

2 glasses of sugar

1.5 oz. yeast

3/4 tsp. salt

5 oz. raisins

1.5 oz. raisins 

1.5 oz. candied peel 

1.5 oz. almonds

1/2 pack of vanilla powder