Nikita Shangin. Nikita Shangin: “There are many theaters, but the Bolshoi is one

Christmas is a wonderful family holiday and it should be celebrated on a grand scale. According to tradition, there should be luxurious treats on the table: pigs with buckwheat porridge, goose or turkey, a variety of pies, gingerbread cookies and, of course, Christmas cake.

Irina Chadeeva’s Christmas cake is perfectly stored even without a refrigerator and will be appropriate not only on a holiday, but also as an afternoon snack at work. Bake the cake at a low temperature because it takes a long time to bake. And if your oven tends to fry everything, wrap the outside of the pan with damp newspaper folded several times.

According to all the rules, they begin to prepare such baked goods approximately a month and a half before Christmas, so that the cake can rest and the crumb becomes moist and fragrant. But if you, like us, absolutely do not have time, bake a cupcake today!

RECIPE FOR THE MOST DELICIOUS CHRISTMAS CAKE

What do you need:

Dough:
200 g butter
175 g brown sugar
4 eggs
220 g flour
450 g of dried fruit mixture (light and dark raisins, candied fruits, dried cherries and cranberries)
50 ml of aromatic alcohol (rum, sherry, muscat wine)
30 g ground almonds

Honey glaze:
2 squirrels
120 g honey
dried fruits or candied fruits

baking dish with a diameter of 20 cm

How to make the most delicious Christmas cake:

1. Place dried fruits in a jar with a lid and fill with alcohol. Leave for several days (they can be stored this way for several years). If you don't have time to soak dried fruits, place them in a bowl, cover with alcohol and microwave for about 10 minutes on low, stirring occasionally. Once the dried fruits have cooled, they will be ready to eat.

2. Place dried fruits (without liquid, if any) in a bowl sprinkled with a spoonful of flour (take flour from the amount measured for baking). Add a spoonful of flour and mix well to coat the dried fruits in flour.

3. In a large bowl, beat the butter and sugar until pale, add the eggs one at a time, beating the mixture until creamy each time.

4. Add ground almonds and mix with a mixer at low speed.

OPTIONS:

Choose any dried fruits to your taste, for this cupcake total weight should be about 500 g;

Can also be used for coating chocolate glaze, powdered sugar or fondant.

5. Add flour, stir until smooth.

Place dried fruits. Stir.

6. Place the dough in a greased and floured pan, carefully spreading it out with a spatula. Make a hole in the middle of the cake so that the surface will be more even after baking.

7. Bake at 150°C for about two hours. Half an hour before the end of baking, check the readiness with a splinter. After baking, cool completely without removing the cake from the pan.

8. In order for the cake to become as tasty as possible and acquire its unique aroma, it needs to be wrapped in film and left in the refrigerator for about one month.

9. Honey glaze is prepared before serving. Place a mixing bowl over a saucepan of gently simmering water, add the egg whites, add honey and beat with a mixer at maximum speed until very thick. Remove the bowl from the heat.

10. When the meringue has cooled, beat it again by hand with a whisk and place it on the cake.

11. Garnish with fresh or dried fruit to taste.

IN new year holidays you've been struck by a culinary muse and you urgently want to bake delicious pies? Search new book Irina Chadeeva “Pie Science for Beginners”, published by the publishing house “Mann, Ivanov and Ferber”!

Traditional Christmas pastries that are prepared several weeks before the holiday. The cake keeps well when wrapped. cling film, does not become stale and does not spoil for a whole month. The longer it is stored, the tastier and more aromatic it turns out. Just a warning: if this is your first time, make two Christmas cupcakes at once. If you can't resist, eat it long before the holiday. And this way at least one will have a chance to survive :)

Total cooking time – 1 hour 45 minutes
Active cooking time – example: 25 minutes
Cost – 4.4 $
Calorie content per 100 g – 388 kcal
Number of servings – 8 servings

How to make a Christmas cupcake

Ingredients:

Butter – 200 g. It should be at room temperature before cooking.
Brown sugar– 200 g
Wheat flour – 250 g
Baking powder– 1/4 tsp.
Egg – 4 pcs. Must be at room temperature before cooking.
Candied fruits – 350 g. You can use a mixture of light and dark raisins, dried cherries, cranberries, lemon, orange, pineapple, etc. - to your taste. If the candied fruits are large, then before starting cooking, cut them into pieces the size of raisins.
Rum – 100 ml(or cognac)
Salt – 1/2 tsp.
Almonds – 150 g
Cinnamon - on the tip of a knife
Cloves - on the tip of a knife

Preparation:

Step one is to soak candied fruits for 3-4 hours in rum (or cognac).

If the alcohol is not completely absorbed, then drain the candied fruits in a colander and allow the excess liquid to drain. Place the unpeeled almonds in boiling water for 1-2 minutes, cool, and then remove the skins. Grind 50 g of almonds using a blender, set aside 100 g.

Beat the butter and sugar with a mixer at maximum speed until smooth. Add eggs one at a time, continuously whisking the mixture.

Gradually add pre-sifted flour, spices, salt and baking powder to the butter-egg mixture. Mix gently (not with a mixer, but with a regular spoon).

Roll candied fruits in flour.

Add candied fruits and chopped almonds to the dough, mix.

Grease the sides of the baking dish with butter and sprinkle with flour. Place baking paper on the bottom.

Place the dough into the mold. The form must be filled more than 2/3 full, since the dough will still rise during baking. The candied fruits that will “peek out” from above must be carefully covered with dough, otherwise they may burn during baking. Level the top and spread 100 g of almonds over the surface.

Bake at 180 degrees. Baking time depends on your oven. My cake baked in 1 hour and 20 minutes. Before removing it from the pan, the cake must cool completely.

Bon appetit!

At Christmas, it is customary to bake a fragrant Christmas cake containing a lot of dried fruits, nuts, and candied fruits. All kinds of spices and aromatic additives give the product a unique Christmas smell. With regular baked goods, the freshness decreases after two or three days. And over time, the Christmas cake becomes tastier than before.

Christmas cake is an ancient English tradition. Originally it was porridge with plums, which was served at Christmas as a transition from fasting to fasting food. Later, dried fruits, spices, and honey were added to the porridge. In the 16th century, butter, flour, and eggs were added to the recipe. The result was boiled pudding. Later, new spices were introduced. In the 19th century, it was already a real, baked cake containing citrus zest, nuts, and candied fruits and berries from local and exotic fruits.

Nowadays cupcakes are not so popular, but they are still found on our table. However, in England it is a symbol of Christmas. Not a single family can do without it. The most delicious is the English Christmas cake.

Basic requirements and preparation of main ingredients

Traditionally, the baked goods were prepared a month or a month and a half before Christmas. This was done to allow time for the baked product to age. During the entire period of infusing the cake, it is sprinkled with alcohol every three days. Thanks to this technique, after the alcohol evaporates, only the aroma remains.

Use a large number of nuts, candied fruits and dried fruits. Sometimes there are more of these components than dough. Dried and dried fruits and berries are cut into pieces, freed from seeds. Add candied fruits and fried nuts, sprinkle with spices. The mixture is placed in a convenient container, filled with alcohol, left for a week, shaking the contents periodically. For half a kilogram of the mixture, take half a glass of alcohol.

If you don’t have time to keep the fruit mixture for a week, you can get by with one night. To do this, mix alcohol with hot tea. When boiling water is used, the ingredients are quickly soaked and are ready by morning.

Preparing the dough

Christmas baking dough contains a lot of baking and additives in the form of nuts and dried fruit. A mixture of fruits and nuts soaked in alcoholic drink is mixed into the finished dough.

Each housewife has her own recipe for making dough. They may differ slightly in quantity, composition of ingredients, type of spices.

Even the order of mixing products is different. But, regardless of the recipe, the dough is prepared without yeast, and therefore is quick and not difficult. To preserve the softness of baked goods for a long time, honey and molasses are added to the dough as preservatives.

Subtleties of proper baking

Line the pan with parchment paper and grease vegetable oil without smell. Bake at a low temperature, not higher than one hundred and forty degrees. The duration depends on the size of the product, and can reach four hours. Readiness is checked with a wooden splinter, toothpick or match.

The finished cake cools in a pan covered with foil. After complete cooling, better the next day, ready product removed from the mold.

How to decorate cupcakes correctly?

On Christmas Day, a decorated cupcake is served along with other dishes. Decorate in different ways to suit your taste. Some housewives simply sprinkle the product with powdered sugar. Others are topped with fondant, sugar or egg white icing. The snow-white coating looks beautiful on its own. Until it hardens, the surface is decorated with nuts, candied berries, and marzipan. They also set up figures made of mastic and sprinkle the top with cake sprinkles.

Christmas Cupcake Recipes

According to old customs, festive table There must be a Christmas cupcake. Modern housewives have big choice various recipes for this baking. They can choose the Christmas cupcake according to their taste and the taste preferences of their family.

If housewives have chosen this particular recipe, they should start baking a month before the holiday.

Required Products:

4 large eggs;
120 milliliters 20% cream;
a glass of fine sugar with a slide;
150 grams of melted butter;
1.5 cups flour;
200 grams of dried fruit;
280 grams of white raisins;
60 grams of almonds;
2 coffee spoons of mixture (cinnamon, nutmeg, cardamom);
citrus zest;
a packet of baking powder;
50 milliliters of quality cognac.

Cooking begins with the filling. Raisins are cleared of branches and seeds. Afterwards, you need to sort out the dried fruits selected to your taste. Wash everything thoroughly, dry a little, cut into small pieces. Place in a deep bowl and pour in alcoholic beverage. Place the mixture in the refrigerator for seven days. To ensure that all dried fruits are equally soaked, they must be stirred daily.

Before grinding almonds, they must be dried in the oven. The almonds will be ready in ten minutes.

After seven days, when the dried fruits are soaked, you can start baking. Beat butter with sugar. When preparing the dough, it is better to use a mixer. Beat the eggs into the mixture one by one. Add zest, spices, flour and baking powder. Finally, stir in the nuts and soaked fruit.

Bake in the pan for three hours. Soak the cake with alcohol without removing it from the mold. Keep warm for twelve hours, wrapped in foil. After this period, the cake is removed from the mold and wrapped in baking paper and foil. Sprinkle the baked goods with cognac every three days for a month.

This pastry is distinguished by an abundance of fillings from various dried fruits, spices, and nuts.

You need to prepare for the test:

a glass of cane sugar;
4 medium-sized eggs;
a glass (with top) of flour;
70 milliliters of good cognac;
lemon zest;
60 grams of walnuts;
a packet of baking powder;
coffee spoon of ginger;
200 grams of soft butter.

Products for filling:

a teaspoon (without top) of cinnamon and cardamom;
240 grams of dates, dried apricots, prunes;
240 grams of dried fruit mixture of raisins and cherries;
50 grams of walnuts;
6 tablespoons orange juice;
half a glass of lemon juice;
coffee spoon of lemon zest;
170 milliliters of cognac.

Mix cognac, juice, spices, zest, washed dried fruits, crushed together with nuts. Keep in the cold for a week. Beat the melted butter with sugar, salt, eggs, adding them one at a time. Add crushed, fried nuts, zest, ginger, cognac, flour with baking powder, soaked dried fruits. Bake for three hours.

Sprinkle the prepared cake with alcohol without removing it from the pan and wrap it in foil. After twelve hours, remove the cake and wrap it in paper and foil. Sprinkle with alcohol once a week. After a few weeks the cake is ready.

With added dried fruits

In this option, dried fruits are selected individually.

Ingredients:

600 grams of your favorite dried fruits;
a glass of rum;
4 eggs;
1.5 cups flour;
a glass of crushed almonds;
200 grams of butter;
a packet of baking powder;
half a coffee spoon of vanilla;
the same amount of cinnamon;
0.5 dessert spoons of a mixture of nutmeg, cardamom, cloves;
2 glasses of sugar.

Soak dried fruits in rum for a week. Beat butter with fine-grained sugar and eggs. Mix with other products. Bake the kneaded dough.

The cake is baked from yeast dough a month before the holiday. Required components:

200 grams of dried apricots, raisins;
250 grams of roasted almonds;
half a glass of cognac;
2 eggs;
250 grams of butter;
coffee spoon of cinnamon;
2 glasses of milk;
75 grams of fine grain sugar;
lemon;
50 grams of pressed yeast.

Before preparing the cake, the dried fruits are kept in cognac for a week. Dissolve the yeast in warm milk, add a spoonful of sugar and two spoonfuls of flour. Add mashed butter with sugar and flour to the dough. Knead the dough and let it rise. Stir in dried fruits, nuts, zest, cinnamon. Keep warm for three hours. Bake. Leave for two to four weeks.

Quick version with tangerines

The tangerine cake is prepared quickly and has a short shelf life.

Components:

150 grams of butter;
a glass filled with sugar;
3 eggs;
3/4 cup flour;
a packet of baking powder;
2 large tangerines;
150 grams of dried fruits;
0.5 cut glass of orange liqueur.

Pour the dried fruit with liqueur for an hour. Melt a spoonful of butter in a frying pan with a teaspoon of sugar and fry the tangerine slices. Place the browned fruit on a plate. Here, fry the dried fruits soaked in liqueur. Beat butter with sugar and eggs. Add flour with baking powder, dried fruit, tangerine slices. Bake a pie.

Another simple pastry with your favorite candied fruits.

Required Products:

120 grams of butter;
1.5 cups sugar;
10 eggs;
2.5 cups flour;
150 grams of raisins, candied fruits;
200 grams of dried cranberries.

Grind the sugar with the yolks and butter, add the flour, add the whipped whites in small portions. Add candied fruits, raisins, cranberries. Mix. Bake.

This pastry is distinguished by the presence of dark molasses and a high content of dried fruits.

Necessary:

700 grams of dried fruits;
a third of a glass of liqueur;
juice of half an orange;
2 eggs;
half a glass of flour;
100 grams of butter;
a large spoon of molasses;
50 grams of ground almonds;
teaspoon of spices.

Various dried fruits are cut, the berries are left whole. Mix with juice and liqueur and leave overnight. In the morning the dough is prepared. Cream the butter with almonds, spices, and half the flour. Eggs are beaten with molasses. Both masses are combined with the remaining flour and infused fruit. Baked until done.

In Italy they bake Panettone. The composition of this butter pie is very similar to the German Stollen. The only difference is that Panettone does not need to sit for several weeks. That's why it is baked on the eve of Christmas.

Products:

half a kilo of flour durum varieties wheat;
a third of a glass of milk;
15 grams of pressed yeast;
150 grams of butter;
150 grams of sugar;
a teaspoon of malt;
4 eggs;
3 yolks;
50 grams each of raisins, dried cherries and cranberries;
100 grams of candied citrus fruits;
vanillin;
half a glass of brandy.

Infuse raisins and berries in alcohol. Mix warm milk with 10 grams of yeast, a teaspoon of sugar, malt, and half a glass of flour. Leave for an hour and a half. Then mix 2 eggs, 50 grams of melted butter, yeast, 2 tablespoons of sugar, and a glass of flour into the dough. Mix thoroughly and leave for three hours. On last stage add remaining products. Knead the dough for ten minutes or more. Let rise and bake.

One of the traditional Christmas treats is gingerbread cookies.

Ginger cookies, composition:

1.5 cups flour;
2 coffee spoons of ground ginger;
coffee spoon of cinnamon;
a coffee spoon of grated nutmeg;
the same amount of ground cloves;
a packet of baking powder;
4 yolks;
2 glasses of sugar;
a glass of milk;
faceted glass of honey;
50 grams of butter.

For the glaze:

2 squirrels;
half a glass of powdered sugar;
a tablespoon of lemon juice.

Dry ingredients are mixed. The yolks are ground with sugar until the crystals dissolve. Milk, honey, butter are heated until the products are mixed, but do not boil. Add the rest to the dry ingredients and knead the dough. Roll out into a flat cake and cut out various shapes. Bake until done. Cooled cookies are decorated with icing. For the glaze, beat the whites until stiff, adding powdered sugar. At the end, add lemon juice and beat.

Rules for storing baked goods

The prepared baked goods must be cooled, wrapped in parchment paper, and wrapped in foil. Store on the bottom shelf of the refrigerator for three weeks.

I love recipes with a story... I love to read and immerse myself so much in the world created by the author that I literally let every line pass through me, close my eyes and see the images that the author so carefully describes, not just with letters, but with my whole soul. The author can be sad - and you are sad with him... he can laugh, love, dream, fool around or cry... and all this will be conveyed to you through words, letters, commas and ellipses. It’s as if hundreds of years have not passed since these or those lines were written. Everything is alive, real, vital, as if it happened to you.

Have you ever read the poems of Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)? One of the saddest and most mysterious authors... She always said about herself: “Small, like a wren bird, with eyes the color of cherries, which guests leave at the bottom of their glasses.” Contemporaries noted: “A woman with a light gait, a quiet childish voice and a quick mind,” “She wrote poems, about one a day, and sewed them into books herself. And in her free time from these activities, she walked in the garden in an invariably white dress or baked cupcakes.” Twentieth-century critics wrote: “She had a capricious intellect and the broadest spiritual needs.” In his hometown Amherst, Emily became something of a local “city madwoman”: she did not leave the house, communicated through a half-closed door, baked her famous coconut pie and lowered it in a basket on a string to street children. For some reason, people are always prejudiced towards everyone who is not like them, who is not like everyone else. Creative people They are often prone to reclusion, they live as if in their own dimension, and their way of “connecting” with the outside world is poetry, poems, novels, paintings and... even desserts.

It is unknown what prompted her to voluntarily seclude herself - psychological problems, a strict religious upbringing or the loss of loved ones - sometimes due to separation, sometimes due to death. For the last two decades of her life, she did not leave the family nest, talking to visitors through closed doors, treating neighbor children through a second-floor window and listening to her father's funeral from the comfort of her own bedroom. Of her 1,800 poems, 8 were published during her lifetime. Most of her friends knew Dickinson solely through correspondence. Her poems are filled with sadness and some kind of... faith, hope in a miracle, she was waiting for it and, to the best of her ability, tried to bring joy to others. Is that why she baked her wonderful cupcakes and pies?

Her few recipes can be found in the book: "Emily Dickinson: Profile of the Poet as Cook", I’m not sure that this book has been translated into Russian. By the way, there is a whole museum dedicated to this poetess, I highly recommend checking out at least the online version: "Emily Dickinson Museum: The Homestead and the Evergreens" .

Co old recipes It’s always hard to work - to correctly translate, understand and find what the “milk pan” (in which Emily baked this cake) was equal to at that time, convert pounds to grams, then reduce the amount of all ingredients, since the proportions were given, if not to a small village, then definitely to big family with numerous second cousins cousin, the fifth son of my mother’s sixth sister, on my father’s side from his stepmother... plus experiment a little with soaking and syrup, since I am not a passionate fan of bright alcoholic desserts. More about the ingredients: the composition includes “molasses”. Molasses is molasses, a by-product of sugar production; syrupy liquid of dark brown color with a specific odor. Can be replaced with chestnut honey or other dark honey with a bright aroma. And I replaced brandy with cognac. And now, it seems that we are already approaching the recipe itself.

From this amount of dough I got two cupcakes with a diameter of 18 cm and 5 cupcakes with a diameter of 8 cm.

Ingredients:

For the syrup:
1 part:
500 ml brewed Earl Gray tea
Part 2:
80 g sugar
50 g water
juice of 2 oranges
50 g brandy or cognac

Fruits:
85 g raisins
60 g dried cranberries
60 g dried apricots, cut into raisin-sized pieces
60 g pitted prunes, cut into raisin-sized pieces
60g dried figs, cut into raisin-sized pieces
60 g candied orange or lemon peel, cut into raisin-sized cubes
zest of 1 orange, finely grated
zest of 1 lemon, grated
1 vanilla pod (pod only, seeds in dough)
50 g cognac

Dough:
302 g flour
1/4 tbsp. l. baking soda
2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
1 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 tsp. ground cloves
1/2 tsp. ground ginger
1/4 tsp. cardamom
1 vanilla bean, seeds only
302 g butter
302 g dark brown sugar (ideally muscovado)
6 eggs
80 ml brandy or cognac
80 ml molasses

For impregnation:
Cognac extra

Preparation:

One day before:

Mix dried fruits, zest and candied fruits with cognac in a large, deep bowl. Set aside.

Brew tea, strong enough and pour it hot into dried fruits. Stir and let stand for 4-6 hours.

Make a syrup from sugar, water and freshly squeezed orange juice. Simply bring to a boil and stir until the sugar is completely dissolved. Remove the saucepan from the heat and pour in the cognac. Then immediately pour into the dried fruit, wrap the bowl tightly with cling film and leave overnight.

Second day:

Preheat the oven to 150C. Grease your molds with butter and sprinkle with flour. I used rings without a bottom.

Drain dried fruits in a colander.

Sift all dry ingredients.

At medium speed with a mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat the softened butter with sugar until soft, airy, creamy.

Add the eggs one at a time, mixing very well each time and using a silicone spatula to scrape down the sides of the bowl from time to time.

Then add molasses or honey and cognac. Sift all the dry ingredients over the butter mixture again and mix gently with a spatula.

At the very end, add dried fruits without liquid, try not to mix for too long. Place the finished dough into the mold.

And place in a preheated oven. Bake for 2-2.5 hours depending on your molds and ramekins. This is very important point for the pie, bake it at low temperature long time. If the top starts to burn, cover it with foil and check the readiness from time to time with a wooden skewer.

Let the finished cake cool.

Then wrap in gauze, well soaked in cognac. I again made the same syrup as for soaking fruits - sugar syrup, orange juice and a little more cognac. And I soaked the gauze in this infusion. Then, on top of this, wrap the pie in foil and put it in a cool place for 2-3 weeks. From time to time, check the impregnation - as soon as the gauze becomes dry, slightly moisten it again.

Cut only after the expiration date! But for the sake of photography, I cut it right away for you. It is tender, very soft, aromatic and tastes great even right away. But, after the cake sits, its texture will thicken, and all the aromas and taste will reveal even more. Be sure to try it.

And one more thing - in the original, the cake turns out very, very dark, almost chocolate color- this is precisely due to molasses (it is almost black in color) and muscovado sugar, which I, unfortunately, was not able to short time I found and used just light brown. And yet, my Christmas cupcake turned out crazy delicious!

Enjoy your tea!

Nikita Genovich Shangin(born October 21, 1952, Moscow) - Russian architect, participant in the TV game “What? Where? When?".

Biography

Born in Moscow. In 1976 he graduated from Moscow architectural institute. For seven years he worked at Mosproekt-2 in the field of restoration, in particular, on the historical buildings of Zamoskvorechye. Since 1991 in the architectural studio "Kurortproekt".

Member of the Union of Architects of Russia, Honorary Architect of the State Construction Committee of the Russian Federation. Awarded the medal “In memory of the 850th anniversary of Moscow.”

Family

Father - biologist Gen Shangin-Berezovsky.
On the female side, he is the great-great-grandson of Hadji Murad: grandmother Umma Muratovna was youngest daughter youngest son Hadji Murad - Hadji Murad Jr., who was born after the death of his father
Married, has a daughter.

Works

Among the implemented projects;

State memorial complex "Katyn" (Smolensk region), noted as the best Russian landscape project in 1999. In 2001, the Katyn complex was awarded the architectural prize of the Union of Moscow Architects " Golden ratio»
Memorial Complex"Mednoye" (Tver region)
State Center contemporary art on Zoologicheskaya Street, Moscow (1999-2002)
Monument to TV presenter Vladimir Voroshilov on Vagankovskoe cemetery (2003)

N. G. Shangin was the main architect of the reconstruction Bolshoi Theater. The project involved the dismantling and relocation of the Beauvais portico that was inside the building due to its expansion and the functional modernization of the northern façade, which did not have the status of a monument, the reconstruction of the rear stage and main stage, the acoustics of which suffered from the transfer of the orchestra pit to Soviet time, as well as the construction of an underground rehearsal hall and the restoration of the chamber Beethoven Hall. Shangin left the project, which he had headed since 2005, in 2008 in protest against administrative changes made to it and the corruption surrounding the reconstruction.

"What? Where? When?"

To the club “What? Where? When?" I got it through a letter to the editor. He played his first game at the club in 1981 in the team of Alexander Sedin. Winner of the Crystal Owl (1988).

Hobbies: traveling, photography and video, classical music.