Recipe of the Month: Easter Pashka

Easter Pashka Recipe

An Eastern European dish to celebrate Easter, this recipe has been handed down to the family by our Russian/Polish Grandmother. It is a fabulous rich, indulgent, sweet cheese bombe that can be used as a very special breakfast spread or a dessert served with fresh or stewed fruits.
It is best made in a muslin cloth pressed in a terracotta flowerpot. The pot must be unglazed with a hole in the base.

Ingredients to fill a 1 Litre Flower pot
3 Egg Yolks (save the whites to make meringues)
120g Icing sugar
300g Quark Curd Cheese
300g Cream Cheese
150ml Sour Cream
150g Ground Almonds
1 Vanilla Pod, split lengthways and scraped to get all the seeds
100g Dried Currants or Raisins
100g Glacé Cherries and/or Angelica, diced
Orange Peel (to decorate, this is optional)

Method

Line a clean flower pot with a muslin cloth
Use an electric hand whisk. Beat the egg yolks and icing sugar together in a large mixing bowl until pale and double in volume
Blend in the curd cheese, cream cheese, sour cream, ground almond and vanilla seeds into the egg and sugar.
Fold the dried fruits into the mixture then transfer to the flower pot.
Tightly knot the cloth and press it firmly down into the pot. Place a small saucer on top and weight it down (a large tin of beans will do nicely).
Put the flower pot in a bowl to catch the whey and raise it off the base so it can drain well (3 even sized pebbles work well).
Leave in the fridge for 3 days to mature (or as long as you can).

When ready to serve, open the muslin, lift the Pashka out of the flowerpot and turn it out into a serving dish.

To follow Grandmother Irena’s recipe to the letter, carve an X B out of orange peel and place these on top.
(The letters mean “Christ Resurrected”, but you don’t have to do this if you don’t want to).

A very Happy Easter from the Gladwin Family.

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Recipe by Peter Gladwin ©