Sour Cream Easter Bread With Honey-Walnut Filling

This year I decided to combine the shape of a babka and the taste of a twisted, nut-filled Hefezopf for easter by making a huge round Easter bread rolled up with a walnut-honey-cinnamon filling. It straddles the line between a cake and a bread, but in any case it's incredibly good and definitely making a comeback during future holidays.

The nut filling is mildly sweet and spiced, and complements the aromatic, yeasty dough well. It's very moist when fresh thanks to the sour cream and oil, but tastes fantastic even when dried out.

You don't need to use the nut filling- or any filling at all. This dough would also probably taste good with an almond, chocolate or poppy swirl, or you could just add some raisins and/or nuts to the dough. You could even make it plain, perhaps adding a bit of lemon or orange zest in that case.

No matter what else is used, this is a champion amongst sweet yeast doughs!

Sour Cream Easter Bread
From Angellovescooking

For Dough:
3 Eggs and 1 yolk
200 g. Sour cream
150 g. Sugar
60 g. Butter, melted
40 g. Neutral or walnut oil
1/2 Tsp. Salt
1 Tsp. Vanilla extract
1/2 Tsp. Rum extract or 1 TBSP rum, optional
1/2 TBSP Lemon juice
30 g. Fresh yeast, or 10 g. Active dry yeast
650 g. Bread flour, sifted

Butter and sugar, for the mold

Find a mold for the bread- a large kugelhopf mold, bundt mold or other loaf pan. Grease with butter and sprinkle with sugar.
Mix sour cream and yeast to dissolve. Add eggs and yolk, sugar, vanilla, rum and lemon juice.

Whisk together the salt and flour. Add the above wet mixture and knead until smooth. Add salt, oil and butter and knead until well incorporated.

Let rise for 1 hour to 90 minutes, or until doubled, in an oiled covered bowl.

Divide dough into 3 pieces. Spread each with filling and roll up, then twist and the whole twist in half. Place each piece into the kugelhopf or other bread mold to fill it up, then cover and let rise another 1 hour-90 minutes.

Bake at 180℃ for 45-50 minutes, covering with aluminium foil if it browns too quickly.

For the Filling:
200 g. Walnuts
150 g. Honey, liquid
1-2 Tsp. Cinnamon
1 TBSP Rum
1 Egg white, lightly beaten

Grind nuts in a food processor until some coarse bits remain, but most are smooth. Add honey, cinnamon, rum and egg white and mix well.

Hot Cross Buns

While not traditional for my family, hot cross buns are very popular in the area where I live- so they make a guest appearance at the easter table. Some are more breadlike and some are more sweet with crosses made of icing, so mine are a kind of intermediate that's not too sweet, uses a pastry cross, and has lots of spices, orange zest and currants. 

I glazed mine with an Azerbaijani white cherry jam, but any light-coloured jam can be used. you can also skip the crosses and just make these any-occasion buns. I imagine they'd make really good bread pudding. 

Hot Cross Buns
Adapted from I Love Bake

500 g. Bread flour
1 1/2 Tsp. Gingerbread spices
1 Tsp. Salt
75 g. Demerara or regular sugar
21 g. Fresh yeast, or 2 1/4 Tsp. Active dry yeast
300 ml. Milk
50 g. Butter
1 Egg
Zest of 1 orange
1 TBSP Oil
50 g. Candied orange peel
80 g. Currants

For the Pastry Crosses:
1/2 C. Water
75 g. Flour

Apricot jam or marmalade, to glaze (optional)

Sift together flour, salt, spices and add sugar.

Bring milk to a rolling boil. Remove from heat and add butter to melt. Add orange zest and let cool until lukewarm.

Dissolve yeast in milk mixture and add to the flour mixture, along with the egg and oil. Knead until smooth, then add currants and peel and knead until well incorporated. Let rise in a covered, greased bowl for 1 hour.

Divide into 12-15 round balls. Shape into buns and cover. Let rise 30-60 minutes.

Preheat oven to 200℃.

Mix pastry cross ingredients well with a fork and pour into a pastry bag with the tip cut off. Pipe the mixture in a cross shape onto each bun.

Bake for 15-20 minutes. Glaze with warmed jam or marmalade, if desired.

Carrot-Almond Squares for Easter

I love carrot cake, and it just seems right to have something with carrots for easter. But these squares are nothing like regular carrot cake, apart from the earthy taste of the carrots, moisture from the oil and mildly spiced flavour. Instead, these are more like blondies- almost fudgy because of how moist they are and not as light as a loaf or layer cake. I use almond extract and slivered almonds to complement the almond flour that helps contribute to the texture.

As an added plus, this recipe is really, really easy- even accounting for the sour cream glaze I made as a slightly tangy alternative to cream cheese frosting, it takes hardly any time to make and only really requires a couple of bowls. Perfect if, like me, you still have a lot of easter baking to get through.

Carrot-Almond Squares
Adapted from chefkoch.de

200 g. Grated carrots
125 g. Flour
125 g. Sugar
1 Tsp. Baking powder
Pinch of salt
1 Tsp. Cinnamon
1/4 Tsp. Cardamom
100 g. Ground almonds/almond flour
1/2 Tsp. Almond extract
125 ml. Oil
2 Eggs
1/2 C. Unskinned slivered almonds to decorate, if desired

Preheat oven to 180℃ and grease an 8"x8" pan well. 

Sift together dry ingredients. Mix with the remaining ingredients in a food processor or by hand until well combined. 

Bake for 20-30 minutes, or until a fork poked in comes out clean. Let cool before using a knife to cut around the edges and inverting the pan onto a plate to remove the cake.

For the Sour Cream Glaze:
2 TBSP Sour cream
2/3 C. Powder sugar
Drop each of vanilla extract and lemon juice

Blend all until thoroughly combined and pour onto cooled cake. Sprinkle on slivered almonds if using.