How to keep Easter soft and fresh for a long time
Easter bread is special and is baked in advance, preparing for the holiday. It is interesting to know in what ways and for how long you can keep cakes baked on Maundy Thursday, according to tradition, so that on Bright Sunday in the morning you can carry them for consecration to the church and then enjoy this bread all day long and treat everyone to them.
Usually, many people buy Easter cakes in advance on Saturday evenings, but in recent years, hostesses have increasingly baked them themselves. To keep Easter bread fresh and soft for several days, you need to know how much and where to store such festive, special pastries.
The most important thing about keeping Easter cakes
- In no case should the glaze be wrapped in a bag or foil!
- You can freeze the cottage cheese Easter that has not been eaten!
- Stale Easter cake can be freshened up with a microwave.
What is the difference between Easter cake and Easter
Before recommending how to keep Easter cake fresh for several days, you should know the difference, how Easter differs from Easter cake. Both words are present in our everyday life, and many hostesses confuse them. And in supermarkets, finished products are often signed in different ways, although Easter cake and Easter are different types of holiday baked goods, and they are stored in different ways.
Kulich is a product made from sweet yeast dough, which has a tall shape and is traditionally bought or baked before Easter. It can be with raisins or candied fruits, always made from butter dough and decorated with icing with sprinkles, and more recently with mastic figurines.
Easter is a curd product that has the shape of a truncated pyramid, which symbolizes the Holy Sepulcher. Easter cottage cheese can be baked, but more often it is formed from raw cottage cheese with raisins and candied fruits in a silicone form, and is not additionally decorated.
Why is there such confusion? The thing is that in the Ukrainian language there is no word “kulich”, only the word “paska”, more often simplified – “easter”. And here there is a difference – an ordinary cake is Easter, but a curd cake is a curd Easter. For Russians, the curd product is called Easter, and the one baked from dough is called Easter cake.
But no matter how you call your holiday baked goods, you need to know how to store them correctly. The longer the baked Easter cakes remain fresh and soft, the tastier they will be. The recipe also plays an important role in the storage duration of the cakes – people have always baked them “rich”, a lot of homemade eggs, sour cream, good flour and candied fruits went into the dough. They were baked on Thursday, then it was necessary to properly keep the freshness of the baked goods until Sunday.
How to store cakes correctly
There are several ways to store fresh homemade cakes, depending on how they are decorated and what kind of dough they are made from, so that the baked goods do not dry out:
- cling film;
- freezing;
- enameled pan;
- cooling;
- impregnation;
- frosting.
Each of these methods will help keep the cake soft until Easter, depending on what kind of dough it is made from.
It is worth noting that Easter cakes are usually decorated the night before, before they go to church with them. To keep the pastes soft for several days, it is best to wrap each item in plastic wrap after they have cooled and taken out to a cool place. This can be a balcony or a pantry, and you can also store Easter cakes so that they do not get stale in the refrigerator.
The optimum storage temperature for ready-made Easter bread is + 3 … + 5 ° С, no longer than 3 days.
An enamel saucepan will be a great idea in what to store ready-made fresh cakes. It is necessary to fold the products carefully wrapped in cling film in a container, then cover it with a lid and take it out to a cool place. Cooked Easter will keep its freshness for up to 3 days.
Many hostesses make cakes for children separately, and separately for adults. A small Easter is placed in a children’s basket, and for adults, holiday pastries are larger. To preserve the taste and aroma of the Easter cake until Easter, it can be impregnated with rum or cognac impregnation, or liqueur in advance. Alcohol will stop the drying process and retain moisture inside the dough, and such an impregnation will make the baked goods more spicy for the holiday. The shelf life of cakes prepared in this way is 3-5 days at a temperature of + 3 … + 5 ° С.
How to store cakes with icing
If you immediately cook Easter and decorate them with protein icing, remember that the way they are stored is slightly different from unadorned Easter cakes. In order not to damage the decoration on Easter bread, you need to carefully pack each cake in a bag to the level of glaze, and put it out in the cold.
To prevent such cakes from becoming stale, they should be kept carefully closed from air at a temperature of + 3 … + 5 ° C, in the same enamel pan covered with a lid. The time that can be stored in the refrigerator for Easter is no more than 5 days on the bottom shelf, at a temperature no higher than + 5 ° C.
Frosting is also a great way to keep Easter fresh. It does not allow moisture from the dough to evaporate, so you need to cover the top of the homemade cakes with it in order to keep them soft for a long time. How long depends on how quickly you eat your Easter baked goods, but the shelf life with the icing extends the freshness of the Easter cake by 1–2 days.
How to store cottage cheese Easter
Each housewife should know in what ways and how much you can store Easter cottage cheese. It is prepared in advance, on Thursday, but in order for the freshness of the taste to be preserved until Sunday, Easter should be kept in a special way.
Important – do not add raw eggs to the base if you are making the cake without baking, even if they are homemade and tested. This can not only spoil the taste of the product, but also cause food poisoning.
It is better to leave the already formed Easter in a silicone mold so as not to wrinkle its appearance. Carefully wrap the form in plastic wrap and place the refrigerator on the middle shelf. Store at a temperature of +2 .. + 3 ° C for up to 3 days. In fact, this is just cottage cheese mixed with candied fruits and sugar, so it is important that Easter is carefully packed and does not collect foreign odors from the refrigerator.
A little more about storing paski and Easter cakes
No less interesting and topical questions – what to do with the remains of cakes and Easter cakes from cottage cheese, how long can they be stored on the table, and can they be frozen?
The rest of the Easter cake after breakfast should be covered with a bag so that they do not get stale. They can be kept in this form for up to 10 hours, but it is better to send the plate to the refrigerator. This bread must not be thrown away and must be eaten or treated to neighbors, friends and acquaintances.
Many housewives ask, if the cake is dry, does it need to be refreshed? You can wrap the leftovers in a bag and put them in the microwave for 30 seconds at a power of 700 W to restore softness to the butter dough.
After cutting, Easter cottage cheese should be stored only in the refrigerator, wrapped in a bag. If you don’t eat that much right away, you can freeze the leftovers, because the curd perfectly tolerates this storage method. How long to store Easter cottage cheese in the freezer – up to 2 months at a temperature of -21 … -18 ° С.