Join your host Špela in a live online cooking class and learn, step by step, how to prepare Potica, the queen of Slovenian holiday dishes and Easter eggs, decorated only with natural dye.
Špela is an author of the award-winning cookbook Cook Eat Slovenia. She will share with you all the secrets of how to prepare a table full of Easter delicacies.
You will prepare Walnut Potica, a rolled pastry stuffed with various fillings is the queen of Slovenian holiday dishes. This most distinctive dessert is baked in potičnik (a traditional ceramic round baking mold with a flat bottom, a fluted outside edge, and a hole in its center). The most typical type of potica is made with walnuts, but you can also find ones with raisins, poppy seeds, hazelnuts, or tarragon.
You will also prepare Easter Eggs, called pirhi in our language.They play the lead role at this time of year. They are used as a decoration no household can go without. Use eggs that are one week old to facilitate the peeling process. Keep them at room temperature at least one hour before cooking. Start collecting onion skin. There has to be enough to cover the eggs. The more red onion skin you use, the darker the eggs will be. For decoration, pick various spring plants, leaves, and blossoms from a nearby meadow. The more spread out and dynamic the plant, the better the impression on the egg.
Live online cooking class is available only in English.
Prepare and measure ingredients in advance
Place the eggs and yeast at room temperature at least half an hour before baking.
a) Walnut Potica:
- Dough
600 g (4 ¼ cups or 21 oz) soft pastry flour
42 g (1.5 oz) fresh yeast or 14 g (0.5 oz) dry yeast
100 g (½ cup or 3.5 oz) sugar
5 g (0.2 oz) salt
1 tbsp rum
300 ml (1 ¼ cups or 10 fl oz) lukewarm milk
8 g (0.3 oz) vanilla sugar
50 g (1.8 oz) butter
4 egg yolks
½ lemon, zested
- Filling
300 g (11 oz) shelled and grinded walnuts
200 ml (¾ cup or 7 fl oz) milk
100 g (3.5 oz) butter
10 g (0.4 oz) vanilla sugar
120 g (5/8 cup or 4 oz) sugar
2 tbsp rum
½ lemon, zested
1 egg white and 15 g (0.5 oz) sugar for whipped egg white
- You will also need
Potičnik 27 cm (10 inches) across, you can also use 2 oblong baking pan with tall sides, 25x12x7 cm (9.8x4.7x2.7 inches)
Plastic bowl with cover, instead of cover you can also use plastic wrap
Wire sieve
Rolling pin
Hand electric mixer
Pastry cloth for rolling the dough
Soft pastry flour to facilitate the dough rolling process
Butter for buttering the mold/potičnik or oblong baking pan with tall sides
Caster sugar and a thin wooden stick
b) Easter eggs
- Ingredients
15 eggs
Dry skin of red and brown onions
3 tbsp vinegar
5 rose hip teabags
A few pinches of salt
Different types of grass, leaves and flowers
Thread
Stockings, cut in 10x10 cm (4x4 inches) squares
- You will also need
2 medium-size cooking pots
Sizers
Butter
