It is a few hours now that I have taken the Easter Bread out of the oven, but the kitchen still smells of vanilla, chocolate and orange. My husband says that it smells like home. Knowing his love for food, I only smile and kiss him gently. Home is where the heart is after all… But I admit, there is something so enticing and festive with a house full of delicious oven baked aromas.

Orthodox Easter is this coming Sunday. It is a holiday of love, life and hope for all Eastern Europe Orthodox Christians. In Bulgarian, the tradition calls for sweet Easter Bread, coloured eggs and lamb cooked to perfection. As an international family, living in Belgium, we have learned to blend traditions. But instead of making a typical Bulgarian traditional Easter Bread, I am trying a new recipe. In Russia, there seems to be a modern twist on traditional Orthodox Easter Bread – they call it Easter Cruffin. Flaky dough of croissant meets moist muffin meets flavourful Easter bread. As a result we have an interesting taste and an impressive festive looking marvel. But the twist does not stop here. I am making one vanilla and one chocolate dough, creating a two colour marble Easter Bread effect. The filling is made of candied orange peel, dry cranberries, almond flakes and marzipan. Absolutely fantastic!

This recipe and method of making the Easter Bread is to versatile. You may make one large Marble Easter Bread for your family to full apart, or make smaller individual pastries. I am choosing for the later, and as a result I have 12 perfect, muffing tin baked small pastries that make for a delicious bite any time of the day. Considering that a few golden brown perfections are already gone, I am starting to doubt if enough will be left for the celebratory Sunday meal. Let’s hope!

Ingredients

For the White Dough:

• 2 eggs, room temperature
• 60 g sugar
• 170 g flour
• ¼ tsp salt
• 4 g instant dry yeast
• 20 ml warm milk
• 60 g butter, melted
• 8g vanilla sugar Dr. Oetker extract

For the Chocolate Dough:

• 2 eggs, room temperature
• 60 g sugar
• 150 g flour
• 50 g cacao powder
• ¼ tsp salt
• 4 g instant dry yeast
• 20 ml warm milk
• 60 g butter, melted
• 8g vanilla sugar Dr. Oetker extract

For the Filling

• 30g melted butter
• powder sugar
• candied orange peels
• marzipan
• almond flakes
• dry cranberries

Method

1. For the White Dough: Beat the eggs, sugar and vanilla sugar on high speed until light, fluffy and doubled in size.
In a mixing bowl whisk together the flour, yeast and salt. Add the beaten eggs into the flour mixture together with the milk and soft butter. I find it helpful to bring the dough together using the stand mixer, helping with a spatula just to get things going. Then it’s about 10-12 minutes on the mixer with a dough hook to knead. If you prefer kneading by hand, the dough will feel very soft and wet. It will feel like you need to add more flour, but don’t. We want to achieve a very stretchy consistency that doesn’t stick to your hands, so a mixer is really helpful. Keep kneading until the dough is soft, elastic and stretchy. If you try pulling on it slightly, it should not break.
2. Repeat the same as step 1 preparing the chocolate dough.
2. Place the dough into two bowls, cover with plastic wrap and let rise until doubled in size, about 2 hours. Once the dough has risen transfer it onto a working surface slightly dusted with flour. Divide in the dough half if you want to bake two smaller breads. Or leave as is for one bigger bread.
3. Working with one half at a time, roll out the white dough into a thin sheet. Smear it with melted butter, sprinkle with candied orange peel, cranberries, almond flakes and marzipan. Roll out the chocolate dough into a thin sheet as well. Lay the chocolate dough over the white dough. Roll the dough into a log and using a sharp knife cut it in half to split it into 2 strands.
4. To make one big bread, carefully bring the first strand curling it around itself to form the base of the bread. Then curl the second strand around the first one going upwards. Cut side always should be facing out, so we can see all the beautiful layers on the finished product. Hide the end of the second strand inside the formed dome. To make smaller breads cut the roll into equal portions and twist to achieve a similar effect like as described above.
5. Carefully transfer the bread into panettone springform. This will make 1 big bread or 12 small bread, muffin size. Cover the bread with plastic wrap and let rise for another hour or so.
6. Bake at 175C for 30 minutes for smaller breads. And for larger one bake first 10 minutes at 200C, the reduce heat to 175C and bake for 20-25 minutes more. If you see the top starting to burn cover it with foil and continue baking. Let the breads rest for 10 minutes in the form then transfer to a wire rack to cool.
Dust cooled breads with powdered sugar and serve.