Orange cottage cheese eatser cake

1. Soak the dried apricots with orange juice for several hours; drain the juice, and squeeze the dried apricots. Cut them into cubes. You can take any dried fruit, but not more than 100 g (3.55 oz).
2. Cook the leaven: warm the milk a little (up to 30C | 86F), and add all the ingredients for the leaven. Covered it with foil, and put in a warm place (35-40C | 95 to 104F) for 15 minutes. The dough should fit a little; if this doesn’t happen, then the yeast has been spoiled.
3. Rub the cottage cheese through a sieve or punch it with a blender.
4. Whip the eggs with sugar and vanilla sugar.
5. Add the salt, the cottage cheese and the zest from 2 oranges to the dough, and stir.
6. Add the eggs, and stir; add the cooled melted butter.
7. Take 2 tbsp. flour from the total amount, and mix it with the dried apricots.
8. Sift the flour, and add it in portions. Knead the sticky dough with a spatula. Cover it with a towel. Leave the dough in a warm place for 1 hour.
9. Add the dried apricots to the dough, and mix. The dough will be sticky.
10. Fill the molds halfway with the dough. Leave it for 35 minutes in a warm place to proof.
11. Bake the Easter cakes at 180C (356F) for 10 minutes, using a convection mode. Then, reduce the temperature to 165C (329F), and keep baking for 30 to 40 minutes; check readiness with a skewer. Don’t take it out of the oven immediately; leave it in the slightly open oven.
12. Decorate the cooled Easter with the glaze.

Mix the zest, the powdered sugar and the juice with a whisk. Adjust the thickness with the juice or the powdered sugar so that the glaze is not too “runny”.

Decorate the glaze with the freeze-dried berries or candied oranges.

Bon Appetit!