Sweets and desserts
Paskha
An Orthodox Easter dessert of pressed, sweetened curd cheese, shaped as a pyramid and marked with XB.
Paskha is a rich Easter dessert of the Orthodox Slavic world: curd cheese mixed with butter, sour cream, sugar, egg yolk and often raisins and candied fruit, pressed in a tall wooden mould until firm. It is turned out as a truncated pyramid, its sides marked with the letters XB, for Christ is risen. It is eaten with kulich, the Easter bread.
What goes in
- Tvorog844%, Sieved very fine.
- Butter317%, Softened.
- Sour cream or cream211%, Smoothness.
- Sugar211%, Sweetens.
- Egg yolks16%, Richness.
- Raisins and candied fruit211%, Folded in.
Rough parts by weight. The ring shows each ingredient's share of the dish.
Made step by step
Each drawing shows the operation for that step. Quantities and timings differ from house to house; this is one traditional way, in outline.
Step 1: Rest Hang the curd cheese overnight to drain, then sieve it twice. Step 2: Knead Beat butter, sugar and yolks, then beat in the cheese and sour cream. Step 3: Simmer For cooked paskha, warm the mixture gently while stirring, then cool. Step 4: Knead Fold in raisins, candied fruit and vanilla. Step 5: Layer Pack into a cloth-lined pyramid mould and weigh it down. Step 6: Rest Leave to drain in the cold for a day or more. Step 7: Serve Unmould and serve with kulich. Finished Paskha, by share.
Breaking the fast
During Great Lent, Orthodox Christians traditionally give up dairy, eggs and meat. Paskha uses exactly the foods that were forbidden, so it marks the end of the fast. It is made in Holy Week, taken to church with kulich and dyed eggs to be blessed, and eaten from Easter Sunday onwards. In Ukraine, paska usually means the Easter bread, and the cheese dessert is called syrna paska.
Raw or cooked
There are two main types. Raw paskha simply mixes the ingredients and presses them. Cooked or custard paskha heats the mixture gently first, which makes it keep longer and gives a denser, creamier texture. Either way the curd cheese is sieved very fine and the mould, called a pasochnitsa, is lined with cloth so the whey can drain overnight.
Where it is used
The cheeses in it
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Sources and further reading
Original text and drawings by the EveryCheese desk, written with AI assistance and checked against the sources above. The shares are a rough, illustrative ratio, not a recipe: every family and kitchen makes it differently. If we have something wrong, tell us.
Photo credits on this page
The small pictures above come from Wikimedia Commons under free licences. Some are cropped to fit.
- Tvorog: Loyna, CC BY-SA 2.5, source