Old monastery books and home cooking notebooks contain many recipes for the festive Easter cottage cheese - “thickened milk”. Any of them can be strictly followed or used as a source of inspiration. The simplest version contains no eggs and requires no baking. It can be changed a little. For example, add cocoa. Weave the flavors of honey and chocolate into a festive treat.
For this Easter you needed:
- Fat cottage cheese.
- Thick sour cream.
- Honey.
- Shelled walnuts.
- Turkish delight (small pieces).
- Seedless raisins.
- Cocoa powder.
- Sugar.
- Colored sugar stars for decoration.
If there is no special form designed for preparing cottage cheese Easter, you should not refuse this festive dish. You can give the cottage cheese the desired shape using another container. It's best if there are enough holes in it. Excess liquid will flow out through them, preventing Easter from “thickening.”
The mold should be lined with a layer of gauze. Then, by pulling the edges, you can easily remove the finished Easter wrapped in it.
If the curd is fine-grained, additional grinding may not be necessary.But, it is better to grind large pieces.
You need to add sour cream to the mashed cottage cheese. It will give the finished dish a delicate consistency.
In this case, honey was taken as a natural flavoring for the white part of Easter.
Easter must be sweet. Therefore, you need to put sugar in it.
All this needs to be stirred and ground very well.
It is better to start preparing the chocolate layer by dissolving cocoa powder in sour cream. To do this, it is important to thoroughly mix the dry powder into a small portion of sour cream.
You should get a homogeneous chocolate “cream”. It also doesn’t need to be flavored with anything additional. The natural cocoa aroma will be enough.
Place a portion of cottage cheese mixed with sugar in sour cream and cocoa. This will make the chocolate layer less sweet. This way the characteristic bitter taste and aroma of chocolate will be brighter.
Stir the curd-chocolate mixture until completely homogeneous. If it seems unsweetened or too bitter, you can add a little more sugar.
To ensure that the separation of the colored layers remains clear, you need to put a chocolate layer down the mold. This is important so that the colored cocoa whey does not change the white color of the rest of the Easter.
It is important to level the dark layer well. How smooth the surface is will directly determine how smooth the boundary of the layers will be on the cut.
Traditionally, various additives are added to Easter curds. Nuts and candied fruits may be hard. Therefore, if Easter is being prepared for people who have dental problems, you can replace them with bright soft Turkish delight. All this must be mixed evenly into the white curd mass.
Now you can lay out a wide white layer on top of a narrow chocolate one. Then, in the finished dish, they will create a wonderful flavor range.In it, the aromatic chocolate bitterness will set off the sweetness of the white, honey part of Easter.
The completely filled form must be pressed down with pressure. This will help the whey flow out faster from the next Easter. To do this, you can first place a small saucer on the top covered with gauze.
It is more convenient to place a jar of water on it, which will serve as oppression. This entire structure must be carefully placed in the refrigerator. You can leave it there until the next morning.
When Easter is removed from the refrigerator, it should take the shape of the container in which it is located.
To remove it from the mold without damaging it, you just need to carefully grab the ends of the gauze. And carefully place on the prepared plate.
Now you can remove the gauze.
And turn the Easter over with the dark layer facing up.
Colored sugar star decorations look great on a chocolate background. They can be used to lay out the traditional letters “ХВ” on the top surface of the Easter. You can also make multi-colored crosses on its sides from the stars. In this case, walnuts became an additional decoration for the Easter holiday.
