Pasca Rasucita - Romanian Easter Twisted Bread - BBD#57

la ricetta in italiano qui

It's Easter time! ... although the weather is showing a most wintry character in these days.

But we are happy anyway, enjoying and celebrating the incoming arrival of the new season; when the sun will come out again (hope very soon :-) it's going to be a festive awakening for the nature and our souls.

And it's time to celebrate Zorra's new home, she moved her blog last month and now that everything has been settled in, she layed a colored cheerful table and invited us to bring along our best yeasted breads to give a hearty welcome to her new place.

So let's go Blogwarming Party together for BBD # 57, the monthly baking bread event Zorra herself created long time ago but still on the run!

I baked a nice and delicious Easter Romanian Cake for the Culinary ABC of the European Community, garnished with little Spring violets from my garden to be more charming for Zorra.

This Romanian cake is a typical sweet twisted bread baked at Easter time, will be nice for breakfast or afternoon tea. It's soft and delicate, either with chocolate or raisins. Easy to bake too.

Dough:

250 g all-purpose flour
half beaten egg
30 g sunflower oil or butter
40 g brown sugar
100 g warm oat milk or milk

12 g fresh yeast 

a pinch of salt

24/26 cm diameter bakin pan

Filling:

300 g ricotta cheese
1 yolk
100 g  brown sugar
chocolate chips
(or raisins, soaked and drained)
a teaspoon liquid vanilla

Dissolve yeast in a little milk. 

Pout flour and sugar in the bowl of your stand mixer, set to low speed and add milk, beaten egg and oil, add salt at last. 

Knead until the dough is smooth and homogeneous, place in a lightly greased bowl, cover and leave to rise until doubled.
 

Mix  ricotta with sugar, egg yolk and vanilla in a bowl, finally add chocolate chips.
The amount of eggs to use depends on the type of ricotta cheese you choose: if soft a yolk or an egg are enough, if hard ricotta cheese you might need up to two eggs.

Halve the dough and roll out into two equal disks. 

Line the pan with parchment paper and place onto the first disc.  

Spread over the cheese cream up to 1,5 cm. from the edge. 

Cover with the second disk of dough and here comes the fun: make 10 cuts with a knife or with scissors as you would slice the pie, but without reaching the center of the cake. Grab each piece and gently twist a couple of times on itself. In Lilly's post you can find a much-explanatory picture.

I had serious problems to cut both circles of dough becaus my filling was too liquid (as Lilly's recipe calls for 2 eggs, but they are definetely too much, one yolk is enough) so I just cut the top disk (with scissors) and only gave a twist (being very worried about rising with such a liquid filling, but fortunately that didn't cause any problem).

Let rise until doubled (cover the cake or keep it in the oven off), then brush with beaten egg diluted with a little milk and bake at 180° for 40/45 minutes. 
If you like a shiny look just lightly brush  with honey when still warm.

 

My cake is a little too dark, should be golden, but I'm going to do it again next week and hope to improve our work! :-)

This recipe also goes to Susan's weekly YeastSpotting

Happy Easter to everybody!