Eastern for Easter

Another traditional Easter desserts is pasha, sweet and creamy quark delicacy with lemon and raisins. Pasha as such is bit heavy to my taste, and therefore I prefer the pulla version of pasha. This is more or less traditional pastry from the Eastern Finland, Karelia.

First you need to make a pulla dough:

6 to 8 dl wheat flour
1 bag of dry yeast
2 tsp crushed cardamom
1 dl sugar
0,5 tsp salt
3 dl milk
1 egg
100 g butter

Mix 2 dl of flour with the dry ingredients. Add milk (40 C), egg and melted butter, and mix. Add the rest of the flour and mix. Knead for couple of minutes.




Let the dough rest under a cloth for at least 30 minutes, until it has expanded to double of its original size.




Mix the pasha filling while waiting for the dough to rise:

600 g quark

200 g sour cream

2 eggs

1 - 1,5 dl sugar

vanilla

peel of 1 lemon, grated

1,5 dl raisins




Spread the dough on the baking plate and pour the filling on top of it.




Keep it in 200 C oven for about 25 to 35 minutes.




Let it cool down properly before eating. That's the hardest part.