Hello and happy catholic Easter, with few days delay!
Why do I start with Easter wishes? Well, I have never liked, nor followed, the traditions.
But this year, due to this peculiar moment we are all experiencing, I felt like I wanted to do something to keep (virtually) close to my friends and family.
What was better than cooking something that reminds me of home, childhood and those joyful Easter lunches with my family and relatives? Something that is linked to beautiful, sunny days of spring. We tend to forget how those cute and happy memories are important for us.
That's why, I decided to bake one of my favourite Easter cakes from my childhood memories. One of that cakes that, every year, my aunts used to bake for us.
That's how it is supposed to look like.
And it looks beautiful, doesn't it?
To me, it looked like something that only my aunts or the pastry shops could bake. Not me, for sure.
When I told my decision to my friends, many of their comments sounded like "Wow, Claudia, you are brave, I have never done that pastry, it's kinda difficult - good luck!". But let me tell you, guys, I never thought about failing.
First of all, I was not alone. An amazing guy with a great talent joined me in this crazy idea. Secondly, I really wanted to taste that sweet - it would've made me feel closer to my family. Thirdly, we really wanted to create something together - and when you do something with love, you never fail.
In this article, not only am I going to share with you few words about our adventure - baking my favourite Easter cake in a foreign country, and the struggle of finding the ingredients - but also I am going to give you the original recipe from my grandmother's book! That's a gift I want to share with you.
So, first of all - the main ingredient of this sweet is wheat (whaaat? wheat in a cake? Are you sure? Yes, I am, and believe me, it tastes great!).
What kind of wheat? To be honest, I really don't know. I was lucky enough to get some weath from a village, and I know that nowadays you could easily find pre-cooked wheat, which is used mainly to make this sweet.
But not here in Stara Zagora. That's why, we decided to put the wheat in water for 5 days of soaking. A funny anecdote: I never thought about changing the water, so that, after 3 days, I got adviced by my flatmate to change the water because it looked a bit turbid. In the moment I changed the water, I really felt a very disgusting smell and for some hours I got panicked that our wheat was not good anymore - but we made sure that its quality was not compromised, and kept changing the water daily. e bad smell was due to the bacterias that were formed inside the water (but that's totally normal, that's why you have to change the water frequently).
So, first lesson: whenever you want to do something, please make sure of the correct and complete procedure before starting!
After carefully washing the wheat, you have to boil it for approximately 60 minutes - the grains must open.
In our case, we boiled the wheat for more than 60 minutes, but we couldn't manage to make the grains softer than what you can see in the picture. That's because of the different quality of the wheat, we suppose.
Anyway, this did not compromise the final result of our recipe. The only thing is that, after some days, the grains became harder and we could feel the texture while eating the cake. In the original cake, this doesn't happen.
Well, before going on with the recipe I must admit - finding the proper ingredients was kind of a challenge! In Bulgaria, this sweet is not very popular and many of the things we were looking for were not available. But we managed to find the best ingredients for our cake.
So, after boiling the wheat, you need to cook it in milk, with a bit of vanilla aroma (or sugar-flavoured vanilla) and butter (one spoon). This will make your wheat softer, sweeter and more delicious!
This procedure could be done the day before you bake the cake, in this way, the mixture has the time to get cool.
So, time for the dough! To make this amazing cake, what you need is the so-called pasta frolla. In the link, you can find the traditional recipe. It is easy but it's a bit tricky - be sure you mix all the ingredients very well! To make a good dough, we followed this tutorial on You Tube. Be sure to keep it in the fridge for at least 30 minutes. In our case, we left it overnight.
So, after a stressful evening, trying to make the wheat grains open and making for the first time the pasta frolla dough, we decided that was enough and we went to sleep, tired but happy. And, the most important thing, we collected our strenghts for the next day - the great day!
On Sunday morning, we got up early, had a quick breakfast and then started the next steps. The big challenge, to me, was to cook the cake in an oven that we had never used before. If you have ever made a cake, you know that you must "get to know" the oven - that is, you should know how your oven works, how much time it needs to get to the desired temperature, how the heating system works, its efficiency...
But, no time for stress! After the great efforts of the day before, the procedure was almost over. We just had to mix with eggs, sugar and ricotta cheese (this is one of the key ingredients - if you are not able to find ricotta, don't use other kinds of cheese, because, believe me, the taste it's not going to be the same).
To this mixture, we added some lemon and orange peel (the orange peel was not needed, but we used it to supply to an orange aroma we were not able to find here).
Afterwards, we added the sweet wheat to this mixture and kept mixing.
So, one of the crucial moments came! We had to roll out the dough and to put it into the baking tray. Quite difficult procedure, but with some patience we managed to do it.
The glorious moment had come! We poured the liquid mixture into the dough. Our pastiera was ready to be baked! And the oven was hot enough.
We kept it in the oven for around 80 minutes, at an average temperature of 180 degrees (we changed the temperature sometimes, because as I told you, it was the first time we used the oven). We checked from time to time and to make sure it was ready I made a video call to my aunt in order to ask her if our cake looked good (yes, my aunt never fails!). After getting her approval, I could switch off the oven and start relaxing.
We made it!
The last effort before trying it was to wait for it to cool down - in general, people use to make this cake on Holy Friday and eat it for Easter, but we just waited for several hours (around 6 or 7 hours). And it was so difficult!
When we finally managed to try our cake, we were amazingly surprised by how it really tasted like the ones from my aunts, or the delicious ones I bought in pastry shops... we managed to make a typical Italian recipe in Bulgaria, without the proper ingredients, in a small oven we had never used before! No words can describe how proud we are of this. And we really took care of it like a baby - it was our baby!
As I promised you, here's the recipe. You already have the procedure in the post, here you have all the quantities.
FOR THE DOUGH:
Flour 300 g
Butter 150 g
Sugar 150 g
3 Eggs
FOR THE WHEAT:
Wheat 200 g
Milk 400 cc
Butter (one spoon)
Vanilla aroma (or vanilla-flavoured sugar)
FOR THE RICOTTA FILLING:
Fresh ricotta 350 g
Sugar 300 g
5 eggs
2 lemons
Candied citron
That's all, and I really hope you could try to bake this delicious cake. Remember, cooking is both a science and an art - you need to be accurate with the ingredients, and at the same time, you need to feel free to make some experiments, without compromising the final result.
And, last but not least, if you do it with enough love, the results will be amazing!
I still remember a sweet I baked for a friend of mine's graduation party - I was not satisfied by the first result, so I decided to make it again, and I spent all my energies trying to make my best. The sweet was highly appreciated and I was very happy of this cute detail that made my friend happy the day of her graduation party.
Warm hugs.
P.S. the title of this post was inspired by this record which I was was listening to yesterday. It doesn't have anything related to the topic of my post, but I wanted to share with you some good vibes ;)