Here’s the recipe for Rosca de Pascua, a cake that’s integral to Argentina’s Easter celebrations. I made this over the Easter weekend and not only was it much easier than I expected it to be, it made a delicious treat that’s fantastic with a cup of tea. You can play around with different toppings and fillings too. I used dulce de leche instead of custard cream and added dark chocolate and cherries which created a beautiful bitter-sweet contrast.
The cake is almost brioche-like and it appears throughout Argentina across Semana Santa (Holy Week). The shape of a ring is meant to symbolise eternal life and is a key feature in many religious occasions, the cherries, sugar topping and custard cream really set the Argetninian version aside from all the rest. So, here’s the recipe. Let me know how you get on and what toppings and fillings you experiment with!
- Prep: 4 hours
- Cook: 45 minutes
- Total time: 4 hours, 45 minutes
- Recipe serves: 12
Ingredients
- 150g sugar
- 100g butter
- 1 Egg yolk
- 1 Egg (for egg wash to decorate)
- 1 Teaspoon vanila
- 4 Tablespoons of milk
- 500g Flour
- Custard cream (to decorate)
- Chocolate (to decorate)
- Cherries (to decorate)
Instructions
- Put the butter and sugar in a bowl and mix together well until creamy but still firm.
- Add the vanilla, milk and eggs and mix them all together, I found whisking helpful at this stage. Then gently fold in the flour until the mixture becomes a dough that we can begin to knead, stretch and roll out.
- Sprinkle your work surface with flour and put the dough on the table to roll it into a flat, rectangular shape (roughly 1cm deep).
- Add chocolate and cream (I chose dulce de leche and dark chocolate here) to the middle of the dough and roll the dough up (from one of the long edges) into a sausage shape. Now join both ends of the sausage together to make a ring shape. You can put a cylinder shape, like a tin, in the middle to ensure that the dough keeps its ring shape as it cooks.
- You can whisk the egg yolk and gently brush the cake to give it a lovely golden finish. Also decorate with custard cream (again, I chose dulce de leche here), cherries, chocolate and sprinkle with sugar. Pop it in the oven at 180 °C and bake for 40 minutes.