Easter is approaching and it is time to start thinking about the typical recipes of this period of the year. Those of the Casatiello, the sweet Casatiello of the Scammaro omelette, typical of the Campania tradition, you can already find them here on the blog. Today instead, I step out of my comfort zone (Neapolitan cuisine) and take you to Russia to discover a true delight, the Kulich Cruffin.
It is a very fragrant leavened dessert with a consistency halfway between a brioche and a croissant and, above all, with a very spectacular appearance. In fact, as soon as I came across its recipe on the blog impastando a quattro mani, I immediately fell in love with it and wanted to try to replicate it, albeit with a few small modifications.
In its original recipe, indeed, the filling includes candied fruit, but I, in order to adapt it to the tastes of the whole family, used only chocolate chips and flavored the dough with grated orange peel.
Now take a minute to read the recipe and then…let’s cook and eat!!
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- Difficulty: Easy
- Cost: Medium
- Rest time: 4 Minutes
- Preparation time: 20 Minutes
- Cooking methods: Oven
- Cuisine: Russian
Ingredients
- 2 1/2 cups Manitoba flour
- 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
- 7 g dry yeast (or 20 g fresh yeast)
- 2/3 cup sugar
- 2/3 cup milk
- 1 orange zest (grated)
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1 egg yolk
- 2 eggs
- 3 1/2 tbsp butter (melted)
- 2/3 cup dark chocolate chips
- 7 tbsp butter (softened)
- as needed powdered sugar
Tools
- 1 Stand mixer
- 1 Bowl
- 1 Mold for panettone
- 1 Knife
- 1 Cooling rack
Steps
To prepare the Kulich cruffin, first weigh the butter you will need for the filling and leave it out of the fridge to soften, while the butter needed for the dough should be melted in the microwave (or a bain-marie) and left to cool.
Meanwhile, collect the two flours, yeast, sugar, grated orange zest, vanilla extract, and milk in the stand mixer bowl and start kneading at low speed with the spiral hook.
In the meantime, lightly beat the eggs together with the egg yolk and add them to the stand mixer bowl along with the melted butter and the salt last.
Slightly increase the speed of the mixer and work the dough until it is well combined.
At this point, transfer it to a work surface, quickly knead the dough by hand, then transfer it to a bowl with an airtight lid until it has doubled in volume.
Once risen, take the dough and roll it out on the work surface to form a very thin rectangle.
Spread the entire surface with the softened butter and chocolate chips, then, starting from the long side, roll the dough into a log. Divide this log to get two separate logs but attached at one end and wrap them around each other in opposite directions (the left log to the right and vice versa), then overlap them.
Transfer the Kulich cruffin to an 18 cm (7-inch) diameter panettone mold and set it aside, covered, to rise again.
Once doubled, bake it in a preheated static oven at 347°F for 30 minutes, after which lower the temperature to 329°F, cover the cake with a sheet of aluminum foil, and continue baking for another 40 minutes.
Before removing from the oven, always do the skewer test, which should come out dry.
Let the Kulich Cruffin cool on a cooling rack before dusting it with powdered sugar and serving😉 .
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