Monday, May 5, 2008

Poker and Paska

It is an Easter Tradition where I'm from to make a sweet, eggy bread called "Paska". This Easter (admittedly, a while ago now), I invited about 10 hot and savvy ladies over for Poker and Paska night. The poker part is not part of the tradition, but there is a first time for everything.

To start, we admired my Mom's lucious Paska recipe...

I don't enjoy typing recipes out, and this blog is for fun. So read the recipe card above, and then basically after that part, you add about 5-6 cups of flour, as seen here......and then knead the heck out of it. Let it double in bulk, about one hour and play poker while you're waiting. Win big money. When you don't win big because I took all the winnings, you have the chance to take out your frustration by punching down the dough. Then form it into shapely loaves and let these rise another hour while, you guessed it, playing poker...or standing around as so elegantly demonstrated below.

Finally, you end up with beautiful loaves of Paska, that can be admired, or devoured on the poker table, which is what we did, while dipping chunks of it into bowls of creamy icing (as seen at the first photo on the top of this post). For the icing recipe, you must consult the Mennonite Treasury. Or post a comment and I'll give it to you. And for the record, 16 loaves of paska came out of my oven that week, so pretty much everyone I know participated in the bounty.
For more info, Anicka found a sister blogsite with more instructions on paska-making...
http://lovella-at-home.blogspot.com/2007/03/making-paska-easter-bread.html

Can't wait 'til next Easter already.

3 comments:

claire said...

Bread is taking over this blog! I love it. Your solution of photographing the recipe made me laugh.

But did you really win the pot that night? I have to wonder...

c-licious said...

You're quick, Moller. Too quick.

Okay, Sue won.

Anonymous said...

YUMmmm ... I swear the smell of fresh bread lingers around these photos!