Paska Kyivska

• Milk — 1/2 cup

• Sugar — 3 cupfuls, and a kilo for the glazing

• Yeast — 75 grams • Margarine — 250 grams

• Butter — 250 grams • Sour cream — 200 grams

• Eggs — a dozen • Cognac or good vodka — 25 grams

• Flour — 1 kilo • Raisins — a cupful • Vanillin, water

Mix yeast, one cup of sugar, 1/2 cupful of flour, 1/2 cupful of warmed milk and put it in a warm place for 30 or 40 minutes for it to rise. Then add the rest of the milk, some vanillin, yolks mixed with sugar, and whipped whites; add the sour cream, also slightly warmed up, and start making the dough. Use your fists for proper kneading. Melt the butter and margarine and add, when they cool off, (neither the butter nor margarine must be hot) to the dough. Continue kneading. Leave the dough in a warm place for up to 3 hours depending on the yeast you have used. The dough must be able to “breathe,” so cover it with a towel and never with a lid. When the dough rises, continue to knead with your fists, adding raisins and sprinkle with cognac. Put once again in a warm place. When the dough rises for the fourth time, fill the forms up to the third of their capacity. The oven must be hot when you put the forms into it — place the forms in the oven only when you see that the dough has risen to fill them out completely. Bake at medium temperatures until ready. Let the Pasky cool before you take them out of the forms. Sprinkle with water in which sugar was dissolved for glazing the tops, and decorate with poppy grains or dyed semolina grains.