We begin preparing for Easter: we bake Easter cakes and paint eggs according to church canons. When to bake Easter cakes and paint eggs

The tradition of painting eggs for Easter is ancient, but it has successfully taken root in modern world. If earlier, traditionally, eggs were painted only red, today the variety of shades and possibilities amazes even the richest imagination.

Many housewives wonder when they paint eggs and bake Easter cakes in 2014, because they want them to Great holiday everything was done according to the established rules. The first day when eggs are painted and Easter cakes are baked during Holy Week is the Great or Maundy Thursday. From this day on, the church, and various folk beliefs, they are allowed to start baking Easter cakes and coloring eggs. But, if you delve into other traditions of Maundy Thursday (April 17, 2014), it becomes clear that you may not have any energy left for culinary preparations. After all, on Maundy Thursday you need to wash yourself, prepare healing Thursday salt, carry out a general cleaning of the house with washing windows and doors, and also start a big mowing. What should those who, after all these activities, simply did not have time to color eggs and bake Easter cakes do?

The second suitable day of Holy Week, when you need to paint eggs and bake Easter cakes, is Holy Saturday. Last day of Lent. There is not much time left before Easter, but there is still a lot to be done. In particular, bake Easter cakes and paint eggs. With eggs, everything is more or less simple, because in modern stores they sell various options for decorating Easter eggs. These are regular food coloring, special thermal stickers or regular stickers. You can also use traditional methods egg coloring. The most popular method of coloring with natural dyes is dyeing in a decoction. onion peel. The husks must be collected and washed, poured with water and boiled for about half an hour. Then put the eggs in there and cook for another ten minutes. You can get saturated Brown color. Get Blue colour Easter eggs will be helped by a decoction of blue cabbage, yellow the shell will give walnuts, beets will help achieve a slight purple tint.

Eggs are painted quickly and they cool quickly, so that after an hour they can be put in an Easter basket to go to church and light up food. With Easter cakes the situation is more complicated. You need to start baking them on Holy Saturday early in the morning. Yeast dough should rise several times. A folk sign states that the cake placed in the basket must have time to cool and the glaze to harden. Holy Saturday is the second day during Holy Week, on which eggs are painted and Easter cakes are baked.

As for Good Friday, which falls on April 18 in 2014, it is not very suitable for such Easter preparations. We must always remember that Good Friday is the most mourning day throughout Orthodox year. On Friday Jesus Christ was crucified (at 15.00). Therefore, on this mournful day, you must try to refrain from any work, including baking Easter cakes. But, if the housewife didn’t manage to start cooking on Maundy Thursday and she already knows that on Holy Saturday she simply won’t have time to do all the preparations for Easter, then you can also bake Easter cakes and paint eggs on Good Friday. With the condition that this can only be done after 15.00. On Good Friday before lunch, you need to visit the church, pray and remember the suffering of Jesus Christ on earth before and during the crucifixion, remember why he accepted martyrdom.

The main days during Holy Week when eggs are painted and Easter cakes are baked are Maundy Thursday and Maundy Saturday. You need to paint eggs and prepare Easter cakes with great love in your heart and grace. Then the dishes will turn out delicious and will fully comply with the Orthodox church tradition.

The main symbol of Easter, the decoration of the festive table and the pride of the hostess is a lush, fragrant Easter cake. Knowing when Easter cakes are baked is necessary in order to be on time for church services.

Easter cakes traditionally begin to be baked on Maundy Thursday. But if you don’t plan to bless food on Easter, you can prepare everything even on Easter Sunday. But baking Easter cakes requires knowledge of certain subtleties, regardless of when they are baked.

The origins of the custom of making Easter cakes

After his miraculous Resurrection, Jesus Christ came to his disciples during their meal. Therefore, the apostles, waiting for Jesus, left bread for him in the middle of the table. Later, such bread, intended for the resurrected son of God, began to be left for Easter in all churches. After the consecration, this bread (artos in Greek) was distributed to the believers. And since every Christian home and family is a small church, the custom arose of baking your own artos for Easter - Easter cake, which symbolizes the resurrected Christ invisibly present in the house.

What should the cake be like?

It is customary to make Easter cake tall, cylindrical in shape, so that its appearance resembles a church (the same applies to cottage cheese Easter cakes). Easter cakes are baked from yeast dough and decorated with icing, candied fruits, chocolate, etc. The top of the Easter cake is usually decorated with the letters ХВ (which means “Christ has risen”) and patterns.

Holy Saturday is a suitable day for Easter cakes

The best and second day when eggs are painted and Easter cakes are baked is Holy Saturday. If the dough has been prepared since Thursday, then the work will proceed faster. If this was not done, then you will have to get up very early, perhaps even before the sun rises. But, you will manage to do everything in time.

Holy Saturday is still the day of Great Lent, but with the hustle and bustle of preparing the festive table, the time until the evening flies by quickly. Since Easter cakes and eggs will need to be brought to church in an Easter basket to be blessed, the preparation of these products on Saturday should come first.

Rules for baking Easter cakes

The most important rule when preparing Easter baking is to start the process with bright thoughts and desires.

It is advisable to read the prayer.

Do not skimp when choosing products - choose only the best and highest quality.

Special requirements for flour - only the highest grade, it must be completely dry, sifted 2-3 times.

In the kitchen, when you start the cooking process, monitor the air temperature, which should exceed 250C, and the draft.

Close the window and do not open it until you finish baking. The dough needs warmth, find a warm place for it where the temperature is more than 300C, then it will rise faster.

Also, silence is very important and necessary for the test. Ask your family to remain quiet until you finish preparing the dough, otherwise it may fall sharply.

Keep the products - eggs, flour, necessary additives - warm overnight before cooking so that they have the same temperature.

For kneading, it is better to use plastic and enamel dishes.

If you want the dough to have a yellow tint, use saffron and add a little of this spice to the dough. If you don't have saffron, mix egg yolks with salt and leave overnight in a warm place, this will give them brightness and they will color the dough golden. If you want to White color– do not add any spices, although they make baked goods much tastier.

It’s better not to put cinnamon, it will interrupt all the odors and the dough will darken.

Add all additives - vanillin, nuts, candied fruits, raisins last.

You cannot place the Easter cake dough on a radiator, or in any place where heat flows from bottom to top, it will become blurry and good baking will not work.

It is necessary to “knock out” the Easter dough perfectly - knead for a long time, with special care, so that it does not stick to your hands and the surface on which you knead.

A prerequisite for Easter dough is to rise at least three times: first, the dough rises, the next - after adding all the additives, and the last - after it is put into molds.

To prevent our butter bread from sticking to the walls of the molds, it is necessary to grease the walls and bottom of the molds with oil and cover them with oiled tracing paper.

When to dye eggs for Easter in 2018

As a rule, eggs are painted on Holy Saturday, because the most sorrowful day of the church year has already ended - Good Friday (on this day, according to church scriptures, Jesus Christ was crucified in agony on the cross) and you can calmly get down to the festive table. But, if there are already a lot of things to do on Saturday, then you can also dye eggs from Monday to Maundy Thursday, inclusive.

Advice! Traditionally in Rus', the first painted egg was carefully kept in the house for a year, because it was believed a strong talisman. It was believed that such an egg had strong healing properties, even livestock can be treated with it throughout the year.

Particular attention when coloring eggs, and this can be done, as we have already found out in this article, on Holy Saturday before Easter, as well as throughout Holy Week with the exception of Good Friday, should be paid to their color, as well as to their pattern. The traditional colors for Easter eggs are red and orange, which are a symbol of the rebirth of life and its new round.

Congratulations on Happy Easter

When to bake Easter cakes

If the owners of the house are preparing to go to the Easter service, it is necessary to calculate the preparation time in advance. By the time you leave the house with the Easter cakes, they should have cooled completely and the icing on them should have hardened. It is customary to paint eggs in the morning on Maundy (aka Clean) Thursday. And Easter cakes are baked on Saturday morning. Consecration takes place either on Saturday evening or early Sunday morning. But if you expect that with the basket they go to evening service, which then turns into an all-night vigil, you need to prepare for everything in advance.

The cooking time for Easter cakes varies and depends on the recipe. Classic yeast dough for Easter cake, which is risen twice and kneaded for a long time by hand, is prepared within five to six hours. Then the cakes are baked and cooled after the oven. Take hot baked goods out to Fresh air it is forbidden. Easter falls during a fairly cold time of year, and baked goods that have not cooled down in the air will quickly become stale. There are recipes that take more or less time to prepare Easter cakes. When calculating time, it is usually assumed that at least two hours must pass after the cake is removed from the oven. But it is better if four to six hours pass from the moment of applying the glaze to the start of all other manipulations with it.

How to bake Easter cakes

Easter cake recipes usually include everything necessary actions. But for a housewife who is baking Easter cakes for the first time in her life, there are many unknown nuances. So, Easter cake dough does not tolerate haste and careless handling. It can fall due to drafts and sudden shocks. But you shouldn’t be afraid that once you mess up with the dough in your hands, you won’t be able to achieve the result. As a rule, the dough does not work well when someone constantly enters the room and slams doors.

The key to a fluffy dough is good flour. The Easter cakes are made with the highest grade flour, which has rested in moderation. Yeast dough made from freshly ground flour does not work well, and may fall or crack during baking. The flour is sifted so that its particles disperse better in the dough. It is better to sift the flour twice.

The remaining products are also prepared before adding to the dough. What was stored in the refrigerator needs to be warmed up a little. The cottage cheese is crushed so that inhomogeneous lumps do not form in the dough, preventing it from rising. Raisins and other additives are pre-mixed with a small amount flour, then they will be distributed more evenly in the dough.

The baking dish should be made of thin metal. Tin molds, special ones and those made from coffee cans, as well as steel and aluminum are suitable. Special fireproof glass for baking is also acceptable, and enamel dishes for baking Easter cakes are used, probably, in nine cases out of ten. To prevent the dough from sticking to the walls and burning, the mold must be lined with oiled paper. To do this, cut a round piece of paper for the bottom and a rectangular piece for the walls. Inside, the edges of the pieces of paper should overlap, and on the outside they should protrude slightly above the edges of the form. Then the cake will turn out high and even.

Easter cakes of the same size are placed in the oven, large ones separately and small ones separately. This is due to the fact that it is undesirable to often look into the oven to check the readiness of the dough. When ready-made small cakes are taken out, the larger ones can be touched and damaged. But this does not apply to all types of tests. Early ripening yeast, for example, does not react to drafts and shakes in the same way as those prepared using complex technology with the addition large quantity eggs and sour cream. Moreover, the cakes will have to be moved around the oven and turned on different sides.

If the Easter cake dough rises too much, you can stop it by covering it with a sheet of paper or foil. To do this, you need to wait until it rises a little higher than you would like. Under the weight of the leaf, the top falls a little. When the top is on fire, there are two ways to correct the situation. Either by covering the top wet leaf paper, or by placing a vessel with water in the oven. The burnt top can be trimmed and disguised under the glaze, and the sides, protected by paper, can be scraped with a knife. It’s worse if the cake is poorly baked on the sides. Having discovered this, you can quickly, before it cools down, return the cake to the oven without the mold.

When should you dye eggs for Easter?

Traditionally, one of the days of Holy Week is dedicated to dyeing eggs. This could be Maundy Thursday (April 13) or Saturday (April 15), which was called because of this Krasilnaya or Red. But modern housewives do not always adhere to these traditions and prefer to paint eggs when they have a free moment and when it is most convenient. It's up to you to decide whether to keep up with the times or turn to traditions.

Great Orthodox event - Christians will celebrate Easter on April 8 in 2018. The event is considered very important and significant. Long before it, believers begin to prepare, cleansing their bodies, attending church, praying, and fasting. Almost on the eve of the great celebration, they are busy cleaning their home, preparing a festive meal and, of course, according to centuries-old traditions, baking Easter cakes and coloring chicken eggs.

When are eggs painted and cakes baked?

It just so happens that the preparation of the most important dishes begins during Holy Week. Usually, no one begins the process until the home is in order and the clothes are washed. Everyone chooses the date independently, taking into account their employment, everyday problems, free time, however, no one does such things on a daily basis.

With the exception of Friday, baking Easter cakes, preparing other dishes, and coloring eggs is allowed on any day of Holy Week. It turns out that in 2018, similar cases are carried out during the period from the second to the sixth and seventh of April. Having decided on the date, housewives independently choose the time, from early morning to late evening. Everything should be ready by Saturday evening.

Date selection features

Most often, during the permitted period, not all housewives simply have time to bake holiday cakes and color Easter eggs. It would be better to do this important matter right before Easter. Here are a few nuances:

firstly, the time of mourning and the time of Great Lent has almost come to an end;
secondly, most often a lot of holiday treats are prepared, even for those who have a small family, it turns out that it’s impossible to eat everything that’s been prepared at once and there’s still more food for a long time you have to store it, as they say, gradually eat it up;
thirdly, it’s much nicer in holidays taste freshly baked products, which have a richer aroma and taste, and a very appetizing appearance.

Having prepared Easter bread at the beginning of the week, it becomes clear that Easter cakes and buns will no longer be as fresh, and, frankly speaking, not as tasty as fresh dish. Eggs, of course, won’t do anything; they can be stored for a relatively long time, but baked goods will not.

In addition, during Holy Week there is so much trouble, you need to wash, iron, and put things away. Wash the floor, wipe off the dust. In general, there is a lot of work. It is clear that preparing a holiday meal is not entirely pleasant, nor ethical, in an uncleaned room. In fact, every housewife understands this very well, which is why she puts off such matters “for later.”

Trying to plan for the Holy Week period, every Christian plans to do certain things on each specific day. Choosing the most convenient day for yourself, they paint the eggs and bake them at the same time. Although many people deliberately do this different days weeks, because there simply isn’t enough time and rest assured, there’s nothing wrong with that! The main thing is that by the end of Saturday evening the house is cleaned, and the festive dishes have already taken their place in the basket with which every believer will go to church for their consecration!

Which days of Holy Week are exactly suitable for the period when you can bake Easter cakes and paint eggs in 2018? Of course, we are talking about almost the entire period of Holy Week, with the exception of Good Friday. However, not knowing this fact, some housewives put off these tasks until the last minute: only on Holy Saturday, as a result of which they spin like a squirrel in a wheel all day and often simply do not have time to do everything planned.

Therefore, let’s look at why you can also eat Easter cakes and eggs on Monday and Tuesday, as well as Wednesday and Thursday, and also what rules must be taken into account within each day.

ABOUT exact dates egg dyeing

As a rule, eggs are painted on Holy Saturday, because the most sorrowful day of the church year has already ended - Good Friday (on this day, according to church scriptures, Jesus Christ was crucified in agony on the cross) and you can calmly get down to the festive table. But, if there are already a lot of things to do on Saturday, then you can also dye eggs from Monday to Maundy Thursday, inclusive.

Advice! Traditionally in Rus', the first painted egg was carefully kept in the house for a year, because it was considered a strong talisman. It was believed that such an egg had strong healing properties; even livestock could be treated with it for a year.

When are Easter cakes baked?

Housewives are usually interested in the question of when to bake Easter cakes and paint eggs in 2018. The tradition of baking Easter cakes, as well as coloring eggs for this holiday, of course, also did not appear by chance. Housewives can choose any day of Holy Week to make the dough, traditionally, with the exception of Good Friday, when nothing at all can be done around the house. You can serve it on the festive table for Easter.

As a rule, many people make Easter cakes on Maundy Thursday. But here you need to remember that you cannot do eggs and Easter cakes on Maundy Thursday until the general cleaning of the house is completed: this is considered bad sign and a bad omen. Traditionally, among the Slavs, Thursday was considered the best day for making Easter cakes. Modern housewives postpone the preparation of this dish to Holy Saturday, so that every Easter cake served festive table, was as fresh, soft and tasty as possible.

Why paint eggs and bake Easter cakes?

Many are asking the pressing question of when to bake Easter cakes and paint eggs in 2018, but they themselves do not fully understand why this tradition is followed and why it appeared. Color the eggs according to various reasons, there is no single legend why this tradition arose. The most common is the story of Mary Magdalene. She brought eggs as a gift to the Roman emperor and told that Christ is Risen. The Emperor laughed in her face and said that a person cannot rise from the dead, just like the eggs in this basket cannot turn red. Immediately the eggs in the basket changed their color, and the emperor had no choice but to say: “Truly He is Risen.”

Easter cottage cheese is also placed on the table. By the way, you can also cook it on any day of Holy Week with the exception of Friday. You should not put Easter cottage cheese on Saturday, because it may not have enough time to set. It’s better to take care of this particular dish at the beginning of the week. Cottage cheese Easter is the personification of the tomb of Jesus Christ. In shape it should be a truncated pyramid with the initials H.V.

As for Easter cakes, this is a sweet, rich bread that is a symbol of worship. If this pastry is present on the Easter table, it is a sign that God, the Holy Spirit and the Savior live in the house. Now we know not only the exact days when to bake Easter cakes and paint eggs in 2018, but also the traditions why painted eggs and Easter cakes must be on the Easter table.