Greek New Year’s Cake: Cherry & Chocolate Vasilopita Bread

Get the recipe here:https://www.dimitrasdishes.com/cherry-chocolate-vasilopita-greek-new-years-cake/

Ingredients
For the Starter:

1 and 1/4 cup lukewarm milk
1 tablespoon granulated sugar
1 tablespoon active dry yeast
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
Dry Ingredients:

4 and 1/2 cups (650g) all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon ground Mahlepi
1/2 teaspoon salt
zest of 2 oranges
The Wet Ingredients:

5 eggs at room temperature
1 cup of granulated sugar
2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
2 teaspoons pure almond extract
4 oz (113g) unsalted butter, softened
The Add-ins:

4 oz chopped semi-sweet chocolate
maraschino cherries, pitted and halved
The egg wash:

1 egg yolk
2-3 tablespoons milk
sliced almonds
A small coin wrapped in foil
Instructions
In the bowl of a tabletop mixer that has been fitted with the dough hook attachment add the starter ingredients. Whisk together and set aside for 7-8 minutes to activate.

Combine the dry ingredients in a large bowl and whisk together.

Once the yeast is active, add all of the wet ingredients except for the butter.

Add the dry ingredients and knead on low speed for 10 minutes.

Add the butter and knead until incorporated into the dough.

Add the cherries and chocolate and knead until incorporated.

Lightly grease a large mixing bowl with a few tablespoons of olive oil and transfer the dough to the bowl. Toss to coat and cover the bowl with a clean kitchen towel or with plastic wrap. Set aside until doubled in volume.

Preheat the oven to 350 °F, 180 °C.

Grease and line a 10-inch by 3-inch round baking pan with parchment paper. Transfer the vasilopita dough to the prepared pan. Wrap a coin with foil and insert it into the dough. Cover the pan loosely with plastic and set aside to rise (until the dough reaches the top of the pan) for 30 minutes.

Combine the eggwash ingredients in a small bowl and whisk together. Brush the top of the dough and decorate with sliced almonds. Bake on the center rack, uncovered for 45 minutes.

Loosely cover with foil and cut a small slit in the foil. Bake on the center rack for an additional 15 minutes or until the internal temperature reaches 190 °F-200 °F.

Remove the foil and set aside to cool at room temperature.

Happy New Year!

Notes
Feel free to substitute your favorite dried fruit and nuts for the Maraschino cherried and chocolate:

candied citrus
dried cherries
dates
pistachios
pecans
almonds
Music Used:
Greek Sun Time (With Intro)
ITEM ID: 66582698
By: tonyanthony

Its All Greek
ITEM ID: 84456733
By: LowNotes

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Hi everyone yasas to another episode of dimitra’s dishes today I’m going to teach you how to make another version of a New Year’s sweet bread known as vasilopita we serve this on New Year’s Eve with a little coin inside that we call a flui and whoever gets the coin is

Supposed to be lucky for the rest of the year it’s just a fun little tradition that we have but this year I’m making mine with cherry chocolate and almond flavor so delicious let’s get started so in my mixing bowl I’m going to add 1 and 1/4 cups of lukewarm whole milk a

Tablespoon of granulated sugar and a tablespoon of active dry yeast just mix that all up I’m going to attach the dough hook attachment to my mixer and I’m going to set this aside for about 8 minutes just to make sure the yeast is alive and well and active you know that

It’s good yeast when a foamy Cloud forms on top of the mixture but we’re going to set that aside to get all of the rest of the ingredients ready I have a 4 oz bar of semi chocolate I’m I’m just going to roughly chop it I like the way roughly

Chopped chocolate looks better than chocolate chips but if chocolate chips are all you have by all means use those you can do a combination of semisweet and dark your favorite that’s what you should use and then I’m going to add some marcino cherries this is a jar of

Cherries that have the stems attached to them so I’m going to make sure to remove the stems and discard them they’re they’re already pitted so I’m just going to cut the cherries in half if you’re not a fan of marcino cherries leave them out and you could use dried cherries if

If you don’t like cherries at all if you prefer cranberries and raisins you could add your favorite fruit and nut to this so once all of that is ready to go we’re going to get our flour mixture ready I have 4 and 1/2 cups or 650 g of

Allpurpose flour I’m going to add a cup of granulated sugar to it 1 tbspoon of ground mppi these are MPI seeds they’re also known as mlab and you can find them in Middle Eastern or Mediterranean grocery stores I’ve also found them on Amazon on and I’ll put the link in the

Recipe card on the website in case you want to get them online then I’m going to go ahead and zest some Clementine if you have an orange the zest of one orange will be enough but these three small clementines will do it and then I’m also going to add a little pinch of

Salt to this just a half a teaspoon is more than enough whisk this all up and set it aside now my yeast is ready it’s nice and foamy and bubbly and alive and well and that’s what you want otherwise the mixture will not rise now I’m going

To go ahead and add five eggs that are at room temperature I’m also going to add 2 tpoon of pure almond extract and 2 teaspoons of pure vanilla extract and all of that flour mixture is also going to go in and this is going to need on

Low speed for 10 minutes if it’s looking really dry you can go in and add another cup of allpurpose flour you don’t want to add too much flour to this cuz this is supposed to be a very light dough if you add too much flour it’s going to be

Too heavy so one cup of flour should be enough I’m going to let this continue kneading again for 10 minutes after 10 minutes I have a stick or 4 oz of unsalted butter that’s nice and soft I’m going to add a little bit at a time until it’s all Incorporated and then I’m

Going to add the chocolate and the cherries that are chopped up and then I’m going to let this go for another 5 minutes kneading at low to medium speed then I’m going to grease a bowl I’m just going to add a little bit of olive oil

To this and I’m going to transfer all of the dough to the bowl and toss it around so it’s nicely Co and as you can see it’s a really sticky dough still there’s not a lot of flour in this so you just this is exactly how you want it to be

Cover it with some plastic wrap and set it aside to rise until it’s doubled in volume okay so it’s going to take at least 2 hours for the dough to double in volume and that step is super important if you want a nice and light vasilopita

If you don’t let it rise properly it’s going to be really dense so do not skip this step it can take anywhere from 2 to four hours depending on the temperature of your house once that’s done you’re going to want to transfer it to a well-

Greased pan I have a 10-in round pan here you also want to make sure that the pan is nice and deep at least 3 in deep because this is going to rise some more once it bakes grease it with either butter or olive oil or some baking spray

And also line it with some parchment paper on the bottom transfer all of that dough in there and then you’re going to want to have a little coin ready you can do any kind of a coin honestly just wrap it up in foil and just put it somewhere

Where nobody will know where it is and then you’re going to cover it with some plastic wrap or with a clean kitchen towel and set it aside to rise until it reaches the top of the pan that’s going to take about 30 minutes or so in the

Meantime you’re going to want to preheat your oven to 350° fah and get the egg wash ready I have one egg that I’m going to mix with a little bit of milk about 2 tablespoons of it until it’s nice and smooth then I’m going to brush this over

The vasilopita that’s nice and puffy and risen a little bit more and I’m going to make a little ring with these slice iced almonds just around the Border people do all different sorts of things to decorate their vasilopita a lot of people like to write the date of the

Incoming year instead of doing the ring or you can do the ring and then just write 2024 with some almonds on the center or you can reserve some of the dough about 200 gram of it before it goes into rise for that second Rise and you could roll it out into ropes and

Then make the numbers on top it’s up to you get creative with this but I’m just going to leave it nice and simple the way I like it it’s going to go in the oven on the center rack and it’s going to bake for 45 minutes then I’m going to

Take it out and I’m going to Loosely cover it with some foil because it’s already gotten all of the color that it needs sometimes it gets a little too dark if you don’t cover it so loosely cover it with the foil and cut a little

Slit on the foil so that way it has some room for the steam to escape and put it back in the oven for about 10 15 minutes longer if you have a instant re thermometer you can use it at this point and once the internal temperature

Reaches between 190° F to 200° F it’s fully cooked you can take it out of the oven run a knife around the pan to release the vasilopita from the pan and then let it cool in the pan for a good 15 20 minutes then carefully transfer

The vasilopita to a cooling Rock and let it cool completely I’m a little bit impatient because I have so many errands to run today so I have to cut into it while it’s still kind of warm I recommend that you let it cool completely otherwise it can be a little

Bit doughy later on but just take a look at how beautiful the vasilopita is it’s super soft the chocolate is just melting and delicious those beautiful specks of red from the marcino cherries are in there you don’t have to use marcino cherries I know that some people don’t

Like them if you have sour cherry preserves from the summertime you can strain out the the syrup from them and put those instead of the cherries that would be delicious and instead of the almonds I would do a ring of pistachios on top cuz cherry and pistachio go go so

Well together but it just smells incredible it’s so delicious time for the taste test I want to make sure I get a cherry and some chocolate oh my goodness Heavenly you can taste the floral Aroma from the mppi that’s really like it has no nothing else tastes like

Mppi if you can’t find it you could leave it out completely the Almond Essence that’s in here goes so well with the cherries and the ch chocolate I hope you guys give this recipe a try you can head on over to the website demitrus dishes.com to print this recipe out and

Get the exact measurements and also links for some of the specialty ingredients that were used in here thank you so much for spending time with me today I wish you and your family a healthy and happy 2024 I’ll see you here next time yes s