Easter kulich with cinnamon and nuts on dry yeast

Start by sifting the flour (through a sieve). It should be noted that the flour should be sifted at least twice. Now you can prepare the starter. Take 200 grams of sifted flour, pour it into a deep bowl. Now measure out 150 grams of granulated sugar. Take 1 tablespoon of this sugar. Pour this portion of sugar into the bowl that already has 200 grams of flour.

This time we will make Easter kulich with dry yeast. We have instant dry yeast, which we add to the flour. So we weigh 7 grams (this is how much yeast is needed according to the recipe) and send it to the bowl with the flour. Mix the dry ingredients thoroughly in the bowl.

Now we add the milk here. We took condensed milk. You can use regular milk, but using condensed milk makes the kulich especially tasty. It gives them a creamy flavor. Of course, the milk must be warmed up beforehand.

Mix the ingredients of the starter with a mixer.

Cover the bowl with the starter with a clean kitchen towel. Find a warm spot without drafts for it. Leave the starter there for about half an hour. The yeast will activate in the warmth, raising the starter in the bowl into a frothy cap. Wash two raw chicken eggs. Break them, separating the yolks and whites into separate bowls.

Add the remaining ingredients prepared for the Easter dough into the ready starter. Before adding the chicken eggs to the dough, beat them with a mixer. Beat the egg yolks and whites separately. Pour the remaining sugar into the egg yolks. Then, using a mixer, beat the yolks with sugar until white foam appears. Pour this foam into the starter.

The next ingredients to add to the dough are butter and margarine. Melt them in a water bath, not allowing them to become liquid. Since we are only slightly softening the fats, they are not hot. Add the butter and margarine to the starter. Mix the fats into the starter with a mixer.

Beat the egg whites with a mixer and a pinch of salt. Add the whipped whites to the starter. Combine them with the starter, mixing with a spatula.

Gradually add the previously sifted flour. First, mix the dough with a spatula, and then start kneading the dough (by hand).

Knead the dough for a long time. At first, the sweet dough sticks to your hands. Therefore, to make it easier to knead the Easter dough, often grease your hands with sunflower oil. For this, simply pour a little oil on the back of your hand. The dough becomes sticky, fluffy, and layered. It already comes away well from the walls of the bowl and from your hands. Transfer the kneaded dough to a pot, cover it with gauze, and place it in a warm place.

Prepare the additions to the dough. Add cinnamon, raisins, and walnut kernels to the kulich. Our raisins are light. After washing the raisins, place them on a napkin to soak up the excess moisture. Cut walnut kernels into smaller pieces.

When the dough in the pot doubles in size, punch it down. Pour in the raisins and nuts.

Add 1 tsp. of ground cinnamon, sprinkling it over the entire surface of the dough.

Mix the additions into the dough thoroughly. Place the pot with the dough in a warm place for a second rise. When the dough has risen, it can be distributed into molds.

We have metal molds. We line the insides of the molds with oiled paper and fill one third of the mold with Easter dough. We place the molds near the oven for the dough to rise in them. We cover the molds with paper napkins on top. When the dough rises and levels with the edges of the molds, we put the molds in the oven, which by this time has been preheated to +180 °C. Small kulichs are baked in the oven for 20-25 minutes. When the tops of the kulichs turn golden, light brown, we cover the tops of the kulichs with foil. When the browned sides of the kulichs start to pull away from the mold, it's time to take them out of the oven. After taking the molds out of the oven, we carefully remove the kulichs from them. After freeing the kulichs from the paper, we place them on their sides on a towel. While the kulichs are hot, their soft and tender sides may get squished. Therefore, we turn the kulichs a few times on the towel from one side to the other.

We decorate the cooled kulichs with icing made from gelatin. In our opinion, gelatin icing is the most successful icing for Easter kulichs. Since this icing is tasty, it doesn't crumble when cutting the kulichs.

We pour a teaspoon of gelatin with two tablespoons of room temperature water. We stir and let the gelatin swell for 20 minutes.

We pour powdered sugar according to the recipe into a metal bowl. We add 2 tbsp. of water to the powdered sugar and stir. Placing the bowl on the stove, we bring the icing to a boil, but do not let it boil. Next, we add the swollen gelatin to the sugar icing and stir. Now we add a pinch of grated lemon zest here.

We cover the cold Easter kulichs with cinnamon and nuts made with dry yeast with this gelatin icing. To do this, we dip the top of the kulich in the icing. We gently rotate the kulich in the icing and then place the kulich on a plate. We quickly decorate the Easter kulichs with cinnamon and nuts while the icing is still soft. By the way, another advantage of gelatin icing is that it sets quickly and decorations hold very firmly on it. Wishing you a bright Easter!