we call spring

"Spring, spring, spring is coming!" Oleg Skripka sings. And, indeed, it will come, it will not go anywhere. But, if it’s raining and cold outside, and you want to take decisive action, we suggest making personal contribution in the spring business.

March 22 folk calendar celebrates the holiday of birds - Magpies, from that day spring came into its own, and earlier they helped her by baking 40 pies or cookies in the form of birds from dough. The recipe for lean larks is simple and everyone can do it:

• flour - 6-7 glasses;
• sugar - 1/2 -2/3 cup;
• yeast (instant or active) 2 teaspoons or 30 g;
• water - 2 glasses;
• vegetable oil - 1/2 cup;
• salt - a pinch;
• spices at will: vanilla sugar, allspice or chili, cinnamon;
• raisins for decoration (eyes);

But there is one catch here: if you think that making a bird out of dough is easy, then you are mistaken. For example, we tried last year, but it turned out to be something more like Zhdun.

To make everything work out for you, we offer 3 simple ways make a bird out of dough.

1. Larks-koloboks

Everything is quite simple here: you need to mold a sausage from the dough and tie it into a knot, and then straighten your bird so that it does not blur (remember Zhdun?).

2. Larks in profile

This method is more suitable for shortcrust or gingerbread dough, but it can also work for lean.

3. Skylark in flight

Try, bake, use your imagination and call for spring. Maybe it will get warmer outside!

And, if you have never heard of Forty Forties, then read about this holiday on our website. And, if you still don’t know who Zhdun is, then you definitely are.

Bird crafts have always been very popular among lovers of home art. Particularly relevant are the figurines of feathered creatures on Bird Day, which is celebrated in spring on April 1 in kindergartens and schools. The holiday is dedicated to the return of migratory birds and marks the onset of spring and the renewal of awakened nature. On this day, children of all ages make bird crafts, and older schoolchildren make birdhouses and hang them on trees.

Bird crafts can be made from a wide variety of materials: cotton pads, colored paper, plastic bottles, salt dough, natural and any improvised materials. There are many options for creating birds - from simple ones for young children to complex ones that schoolchildren can easily master with the help of adults.

We bring to your attention a few lessons on creating birds with your own hands with step by step instructions, diagrams and tips. We hope that they will help you learn all the intricacies of this exciting process and be filled with new bright ideas.

We will need: plastic bottles of various colors, foam plastic, a wooden block as a stand, a metal twig, foil and thin colored plastic, a glue gun.

Step one, Cut out the body of the peacock along with the head from the foam, not forgetting to make small indentations in place of the eyes. We fasten it to a wooden block with a metal rod, which plays the role of legs.

Step two. Making enough peacock feathers from plastic bottles different colors. We will need three types of feathers: long for the tail, short for the neck and a little longer for the body. To do this, cut off the bottom and neck of the bottle and cut it lengthwise into 3 parts.

We round one end of each strip with scissors and cut its edges into thin strips so that it looks like a bird's feather. We decorate the rounded end of the feathers intended for the tail with two or three multi-colored ovals made of foil and plastic. You can attach them with a stapler.

Step three. Cut out a beak from a red plastic bottle and fasten it in place. Next, gradually glue with glue gun feathers on the body of a bird, starting from the tail and ending with the neck. We attach the feathers a little overlap, as shown in the photo. Do not forget that medium-length feathers are for the body, and meek ones are for the neck.

Step four. We cut out a crest of any shape from colored plastic, which our imagination tells us, and glue it on the head. Using acrylic paints, draw the eyes of a peacock. You can glue cilia cut from a transparent plastic bottle to them.

Step five. We proceed to the manufacture of the tail, using an abrasive mesh for this. We make holes at the base of the feathers and attach them to the grid with a thin wire.

We start making the tail from the end, gradually laying feathers on top of each other in rows until the luxurious long tail of the bird is fully formed. After that, we attach it to the body and settle the peacock, made with our own hands from plastic bottles, on a plot among flowers and greenery.

Do-it-yourself firebird from salt dough - master class

By the Day of the Birds, together with the children, you can make a voluminous firebird from salt dough. The work will take little time, require very few materials and provide the children with a cheerful and festive mood.

We will need: salt dough, gouache or watercolors, colorless varnish.

Step one. Making salt dough. To do this, mix a glass of flour with a glass of salt and knead the dough by pouring 100 ml of brewed starch into it. We prepare it as follows: dilute a tablespoon of starch in 100 ml cold water and pour a glass of boiling water into this mixture.

Step two. Divide the salt dough into 5 pieces and color them in different colors. To do this, add gouache or watercolors to each piece and knead it slightly again. Next, draw a sketch of the firebird and sculpt the details of the bird on it: wings and torso. Dry them in the oven at low temperature.

Step three. We make the tail of a fabulous bird. We draw stencils of feathers and sculpt them from pink and blue salt dough on them. Dry the feathers in the oven. Next, we paint all the details of the bird with paints, cover with colorless varnish, and connect. We make a colorful festive panel with crafts. Salt dough firebird is ready!

Cotton pad birds - master class

Another very cute craft that is perfect for decoration. kindergarten on the wonderful holiday Bird Day. It's easy, fun and very fast. Young children can be involved in making birds from cotton pads.

For creativity, we need: cotton pads, wooden skewers, colored paper, narrow colored ribbons, plastic eyes, glue and scissors.

Operating procedure:

1. We take 5 cotton pads to create one bird. We cut one disk into two halves, and leave four whole.
2. We fix two pairs of cotton pads on a skewer with glue so that it is inside. One pair of discs plays the role of the bird's head, and the other - the body.
3. We glue the halves of the cut cotton pad to the body on both sides - this will be our wings.
4. We glue the eyes and beak cut out of a piece of colored paper to the head and decorate the bird with a ribbon. A cute chick made of cotton pads for Bird Day is ready!

Colored paper owl - master class

Cute owls for celebrating Birds Day at school can be made with your own hands from colored paper. We will need directly the colored paper itself, scissors, Double-sided tape and glue.

Operating procedure:

1. We make a cylinder from a sheet of colored paper, glue its edges on one side, as shown in the photo, and crush the middle so that we get ears.
2. We cut out a heart from paper and glue it to the bottom of the cylinder - these are the paws of an owl.
3. We cut circles of the same size and stick them on the central part of the cylinder as plumage. In order for the circles to give the craft volume, it is better to stick them with double-sided tape.
4. We cut out a triangle of the same color as the paws, and glue it at the top of the plumage - this is the beak.
5. Lastly, we glue the eyes by cutting out circles for them from black and white paper. The handmade owl is ready!

Do-it-yourself bird of paradise made of polymer clay - master class

These delightful birds of paradise are made of polymer clay that hardens in air. This modern material we are also familiar with the names "self-hardening plasticine", "mass for modeling" and "velvet plastic". For the manufacture of charming feathered creatures, we need aluminum wire with a diameter of 1 mm, polymer clay, foil, scissors, round nose pliers, a stack, a glass for rolling clay, a little patience and diligence.

Operating procedure:

1. We create three birds at once at once - while we are sculpting one, the rest dry up. We cut the wire twice as long as the planned tail. We wrap half of the wire with foil, crushing it and forming the body of a bird.
2. We make paws from wire, as shown in the photo, and insert them into the body. We take a piece of clay, form it in the shape of a sausage, then roll it out and flatten it. We carefully pull out the wire from the bird, place it inside the clay sausage, rolling it up with a glass. We insert the finished colored ponytail back into the body. In the same way, we make blanks for the remaining two birds.
3. We take a piece of blue, yellow and red clay, roll them out and gradually, spreading them with our fingers, stick them around the birds until all the foil is covered. We will get three blanks of bright birds.
4. Starting from the center, stick around the paws. Then we take a piece of clay of the corresponding color and make cheeks, crown and beak. From balls of black clay we sculpt eyes, not forgetting to squeeze out the upper and lower eyelids around them with a stack.
5. We create a tail and crest. To do this, cut off several wires of the length we need and roll them into clay. When it dries, round off the ends with round nose pliers and insert the details of the tail into the body of the bird. We make shorter feathers from thin clay sausages by twisting their tips.
6. We make the effect of plumage by applying pieces of clay rolled out in the form of droplets on the body and working with a needle in the direction of feather growth. With the help of a needle, we make feathering all over the body of the bird. For shine, the eye can be varnished. A wonderful do-it-yourself bird of paradise is ready!

More ideas and schemes for bird crafts from various materials

For needlewomen who are familiar with the isothread technique, it will not be difficult to create pictures with beautiful white swans with their own hands and decorate the holiday with them, dedicated to the day birds. Threads for creativity are better to take floss or iris. From the wrong side of the cardboard we draw a swan and draw waves. Divide the drawing into details by drawing the shapes different sizes, and embroider in the technique of isothread.

From woolen threads it turns out a very charming feathered creature. It can be easily created with your own hands according to a simple and understandable scheme.

And according to this scheme, by introducing children to the creativity, you can make a bird of happiness from a beautiful bright fabric.

Even small children can create such a colorful bird from circles of colored paper.

A charming bird can even be made from a strip of colored paper and a clothespin.

A do-it-yourself bird for Bird Day can be planted in a nest glued from paper plates.

Simple clothespins in the hands of a craftswoman can turn into an unusual fairy-tale bird.

And finally, the ideas of bird crafts from natural and improvised materials: cedar or pine cones, painted feathers, cardboard and plasticine.

Call the kids, knead the salty dough and sculpt with us! Salty dough amazing material: soft and plastic, sculpting from it is a pleasure!

All you need is flour, salt and the desire to create!

The easiest salt dough recipe:

1 cup fine salt, 2 cups flour and 1 cup water (slightly less than a cup).

Materials for the bird in the nest:
Salt dough, gouache paints (blue, brown, yellow, white, black), brush, jar of water, stack, garlic press, sheet of paper. for painting finished work you can use acrylic paints, then you do not have to varnish the product.

Pinch off three pieces from a piece of dough, paint one in Brown color, the other in blue, and the third is left white. To color the dough, we make a groove in it, put a little paint with the help of a stack and begin to knead a piece of dough until it is completely colored.

What should happen. We decided to paint the dough in two shades for the nest, adding a little black paint to the other piece.

From a small piece of brown dough we make a cake (the base of the nest).

From the resulting sausages we build a nest after wetting it with water.

Let's make a bird. We divide the blue dough into two pieces large and small.

From a large piece we roll a ball, from a ball we make a droplet shape.

We make a ponytail. Flatten the tip with two fingers and use the stack to draw stripes (feathers).

We make wings. We divide a small piece of dough in half and roll balls from balls to make droplets and cakes. With the help of the stack we make a beautiful edge (scallops).

From white dough we sculpt eyes and a beak (from a droplet ball) of a bird, testicles into a nest. We glue the parts with water.

Let's call Spring together! Let's all bake larks together! These cute birds are the true heralds of Spring, sun and warmth! And if you bake a lot of warm, ruddy buns in the form of larks for the whole world - Spring will finally come!

On what holiday are larks baked from dough? By Orthodox calendar March 22 is the Day of Remembrance of the Forty Martyrs of Sebaste. Also on this day, an ancient Slavic holiday, the Larks, was celebrated. It was believed that on this day these little songbirds flew in, and after them spring came.

Winter, along with its cold and ice, is already pretty tired of us, so we decided to call for a warm sunny spring and bake rich larks.

For larks, sweet dough is made. Don't forget what's going on great post so the dough will be lean. By the way, I like pastry with water and vegetable oil more than with milk and eggs.

For those who decide to bake larks according to our recipe, we will reveal our secrets of their preparation. For the test, carbonated mineral water, so the dough rises a lot - make the larks not too large and spread them on a baking sheet away from each other. To make the birds beautiful and ruddy, grease them with strong sweet tea leaves before baking. After baking, you can grease the larks vegetable oil.

Well, that's all the secrets of cooking larks. As you can see, there are few of them, and the process itself is simple and exciting. Let's celebrate spring with fun and deliciousness!

• Flour - 0.5 kg;
• Carbonated water - 200 ml;
• Vegetable oil - 75 grams;
• Sugar - 3 tablespoons;
• Salt - 1 teaspoon;
• Yeast - 1 sachet (11 grams);
• Strong sweet tea - 2-3 tablespoons;
• Raisins for the eyes.

Dissolve yeast in warm sparkling water.

Sift flour into a deep bowl, add sugar, salt, vegetable oil, water with yeast and knead the dough.

Cover the bowl with a clean tea towel and leave in a warm place for 1 hour.

When the dough has risen, punch it down and form the larks. We make larks like this - we divide the dough by 15 equal parts, we roll each ball of dough into a tourniquet and tie it in a knot, form a head from one end of the knot, and flatten the other end and cut it in the form of a tail.

There is another way to make larks from dough:

This is how we bake larks from dough:

Before baking, grease the larks with strong sweet tea.

We bake larks in a preheated oven at a temperature of 220-240 degrees for 15 minutes.

Ready larks can be greased with vegetable oil.

Recipe 2, step by step: larks from lean dough

The oven on Soroka - the day of the spring equinox - buns in the form of birds, calling them spring - an ancient pagan tradition of the Slavic farmers. At least that's what ethnographers say. Christianity adopted this holiday, giving it the name Magpies (in honor of the forty great martyrs), but demanded a reciprocal concession. No matter how the timing of Orthodox Easter changes, March 22 invariably falls at the very height of Lent, and therefore dough larks, this traditional ritual or ritual pastry, must certainly be fast.

Today we will bake larks from lean yeast dough according to all Lenten canons. My detailed, step-by-step photo recipe will outline the preparation exactly as our grandmothers have done it for a long time - without eggs, milk and other muffins.

• water 250 ml;
• flour 500 gr;
• vegetable oil 2-2.5 tablespoons;
• sugar 2-3 tablespoons;
• salt 1 tsp without a slide;
• yeast 1.5 tsp dry or 25 gr fresh.

As a flavoring, you can take vanillin, cinnamon, cardamom, ginger - whatever you like.

In order for dough larks, essentially lean buns, to come up faster and turn out to be more magnificent, you can first make a dough from half the flour, the norm of water and sugar. Add the rest of the ingredients later and let the dough rise well a couple of times.

We knead the finished lean yeast dough well and divide it into 2-4 parts.

While we will cut the first quarter of the dough, wrap the remaining pieces in a film or simply cover with a napkin.

Divide a piece of dough into 4 or 6 equal pieces. From such small pieces, we can blind our birds very simply.

First you need to make a "sausage", for which we roll a piece of dough to the desired length.

We flatten the lower tip of the dough on the table and cut it - this will be the tail. From the top we make a head: we fashion a sharp beak, instead of an eye we insert raisins. If the raisins are large, you can cut each berry into 2-4 parts. The simplest lark is ready.

But even lean pastries can be made tasty and sweet, as the main characters of this spring holiday - children - love. Roll out a piece of dough into a cake, grease with vegetable oil and sprinkle with sugar.

We roll the cake into a tight roll, which we tie in a knot and form a lark.

To make dough larks more beautiful and provocative, you can make notches with kitchen scissors - “ruffle the feathers”, or sprinkle the backs with sugar, poppy seeds, sesame seeds or seeds.

Lenten pastries cannot be lubricated with egg or milk, but strong sweet tea will help us to make the larks ruddy, with which we lubricate it before baking.

You need to bake such pastries in the oven at 180-200 degrees, until a beautiful brownish color, 15-20 minutes.

Unusual and delicious meatless buns in the form of birds can be baked not only on the spring equinox, but also on any other occasion when you want something sweet, but lean.

Recipe 3: how to bake dough larks (with photo)

• Yeast dry active - 7 g
• Sugar (sand) - 110 g
• Wheat flour - 470 g
• Salt - 1 tsp
• Vegetable oil - 75 ml
• Dark raisins - 20 g

To begin with, we put liquid dough. Dissolve the yeast in a glass of warm water (200 ml), add 3 teaspoons of sugar and half a glass of flour. Knead and leave to stand until it rises.

Add 5 tablespoons of vegetable oil, ¼ cup of sugar, a teaspoon of salt to the dough, then add flour, about 3 cups, knead, if the dough is sticky, then add flour until the dough becomes tight enough, it should move away from hands Knead and leave to rise, then knead again.

We divide the dough into portions.

And we make larks. How to make a lark from dough? For example so. Roll out a portion of the dough into a sausage:

We turn off.

We twist the muzzle.

We flatten the tail and with the help of a knife we ​​make feathers, insert raisin eyes.

And you can sculpt larks out of dough like that. We split the sausage in half.

I put it crosswise.

We form the wings, tail and head.

We decorate the feathers and eyes.

Or you can do this, take a piece of dough, make it flat at one end.

We divide in half.

And we throw the lower piece up - the wing. We make out the head, feathers, insert the eye.

We plant the birds on a baking sheet. I don’t separate them, because while I’m sculpting them, they manage to separate themselves. Lubricate with sugar water (I diluted 3-4 teaspoons of sugar per 100 g of water)

And send it to the oven, heated to 180-200 degrees. We bake until browned, take it out, grease it again with sugar water, cover with a towel and let it cool. Happy holiday!

Recipe 4: spring buns Larks dough

Incredibly tasty dough, lean and easy to prepare! Buns "Larks" are simply magical. Today we will try two types of modeling. We bake "larks" - we call and wait for spring!

• Flour - 420-470 g
• Pressed yeast - 20 g
• Water - 1 glass
• Sugar - 100 g
• Salt - ½ teaspoon
• Vanilla sugar - 1 tbsp. a spoon
• Vegetable oil - 50-70 ml
• Raisins - for decoration
• Sweet black tea - for greasing buns

We prepare products for buns.

How to cook buns "Larks" from lean yeast dough: from warm water, 2 tbsp. l. sugar, 2 tbsp. l. flour and yeast prepare the dough.

Cover with foil and let rest for 10 minutes.

When the yeast rises with a "cap", you can cook the dough further.

Add salt and sugar to flour. We mix.

Add brew, vegetable oil.

Knead the dough - it should be quite thick. (I added another 50 g of flour, as the dough seemed not thick enough to me.)

We round the dough, send it to a plate, cover with a film and let it stand in a warm place for 40-60 minutes. The dough should double in size.

Knead the dough well for a couple of minutes. We divide the dough into portions of 65-70 g.

We roll out the bundles about 20 cm. The middle of the bundle should be thicker.

We tie the tourniquet into a knot, forming one "lark". We straighten the “tail” and make cuts with a knife, form a “beak”, cut the raisins into 4 parts and make “eyes”.

To form double larks, we cross two tourniquets.

We pass the ends of one tourniquet inside the second. We form "beaks".

We make “eyes” from raisins, we form a “tail” with a fork.

To make the "beaks" look even more natural, we cut them with scissors.

Let the yeast dough buns rest for 10-15 minutes.

Lubricate the buns with strong sweet tea and bake at a temperature of 180-200 degrees until cooked.

Homemade buns "Larks" are ready. Every year, on March 22, we bake such buns and bring spring closer.

Enjoy your meal!

Recipe 5: spring birds from lark dough

A simple, lean, budget-friendly, versatile dough for buns and pies, and a traditional birdie dough. Step by step recipe.

• Wheat flour / Flour - 1 kg
• Salt - 1 tsp
• Sugar (granulated sugar) - 1.5 tbsp. l.
• Yeast (dry) - 10 g
• Water (boiled, room temperature) - 0.5 l

Sift flour through a sieve.

Combine dry ingredients (flour, salt, sugar, yeast) together.

Mix well.

Pour water into a wide, high container.

Gradually pour the dry mixture into the water, stirring first with a spoon, then with your hands. In a bowl, knead the dough well.

Cover with a towel. Put in a warm place for 40 minutes.

Punch down the risen dough.

Divide into two equal parts. Leave one part for work. Cover the second again with a towel so that it does not wind.

Roll out the remaining dough into a sausage. Cut it into equal pieces.

From each small piece of dough, roll out a tourniquet about 15 cm long.

Form the birds by tying the tourniquet in a knot. For the eyes of our bird, buckwheat seeds may be suitable.

Plant the birds on a baking sheet lined with foil, let the dough rest a bit.

Brew strong tea, dilute sugar in it. Lubricate the heads, backs and tails of our birds with a brush.

We put the baking sheet in the oven heated to 180 degrees. We watch when the crust on the buns is browned.

Baking time depends on the size of the products and the features of your oven. We take the second part of the test to work. We repeat in the same order. Enjoy your meal!

Recipe 6, simple: how to make larks from dough

• 1 glass of water
• 0.5 cup flour
• 3 tsp sugar
• 7 g dry yeast

• ¼ cup sugar
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 5 tbsp vegetable oil,
• 3~3.5 cups flour

Dissolve yeast in warm water and stir in sugar and flour. Leave in a warm place until the dough doubles in size.

Put sugar, salt into the dough, pour in vegetable oil and add 2.5 cups of flour. Mix. Pour half a glass of flour on the table, dump the dough on the flour. Knead, gradually adding flour, until the dough becomes smooth, uniform, moist, but not sticky to your hands. (Approximately 870g of dough will be obtained from these products.) Cover the dough with cling film and leave to rise. When the dough has increased by 1.5 ~ 2 times, cut it into equal pieces, which are then rolled into balls. Larks are molded in different ways.

Seated lark. Roll out the dough ball into a long sausage. (photo 1) Tie the sausage in a knot. (photo 2) At the end, which turned out to be at the top, stretch out the spout and insert the raisin eye. Flatten the second - lower - end with your fingers and cut into pieces, which will indicate the feathers on the tail. (photo 3)

Flying lark (1 option). Roll out the dough ball into a short thick sausage. (photo 1) At one end, extend the beak and insert the eye.
From the other end of 2/3 of the length of the sausage, flatten or roll out with your fingers. When rolling out, you need to stretch the dough in width, and not in length.
In the middle of the rolled part, along the roller, make a cut. (photo 2) Then cut both resulting halves with shorter cuts. Lift one part and lay on top of the other so that these parts are perpendicular to each other. (Photo 3)

Flying lark (option 2). Pinch off a small piece from the dough ball. Roll it into a thin circle and cut half of the circle into a fringe. Roll a large ball into a roller, pull the beak on one side and insert the eye. Flatten the other end a little and cut into pieces. (photo 1) Moisten a small circle - a wing - on one side with water and put it on the workpiece of the body, cut side up. (photo 2)

You can make larks more interesting in taste. To do this, roll out a ball of dough into a not very large cake. This cake can either be greased with vegetable oil and sprinkled with sugar, or sprinkled with poppy seeds or crushed nuts, or spread with chopped dried fruits or grated apples. Then roll the cake into a roll (photo 1). After that, the lark is formed according to the first method of the flying lark (photo 2, 3, 4).

Put the fashioned products on a baking sheet, greased with oil or covered with baking paper. grease sweet water and bake until browned at t=180~200°C. Ready larks, without removing from the baking sheet, grease with sweet water or vegetable oil, cover with a towel and leave to cool.

Recipe 7: Baking Larks with an Apple for March 22

Birds can be shaped in different ways. I use "knot" most of the time. I roll up part of the dough with the help of my palms into a plump flagellum and twist it into a knot. In order to make a lark out of it, three strokes are enough: on the head (upper tip of the knot), extend the nose, insert raisin eyes on both sides of it and make two cuts on the tail (lower end of the knot).

• warm water - 700 ml
• dry yeast - 11 g (or 50 g live)
• premium wheat flour - 1250 g
• sunflower oil - 6 tbsp.
• apple - 1 piece
• sugar - 1 tbsp
• salt - 1 tsp
• turmeric - 1 tsp
• raisins - handful

Do you remember what larks look like? They are brown in color, often with a yellowish tint. And sometimes a well-defined yellow breast or muzzle. In order for the dough larks to have a similar color, I added turmeric to the dough.

And yet, I introduced one of my notions into this recipe - I mixed a grated apple into the dough. I did this so that the lean dough was soft and not dry. Of course, there is no apple flavor in the buns and cannot be, but there is tenderness, as I planned!

I sifted 600 grams of flour into a large deep bowl.

She poured dry yeast, turmeric, salt and sugar into it. If you want to use live yeast, then dissolve it in water and enter on next step. If desired, the amount of sugar can be increased up to 200 g.

Thoroughly mix all dry ingredients for even distribution. I poured warm water (all at once - 700 ml).

I stirred the dough and left it just on the table, covering the dishes with a lid, for about an hour.

During this time, the dough rose magnificently and bubbled!

I washed a large apple, cut off the peel from it, and rubbed the pulp coarsely. Added to steam.

Stirred, and then sifted the remaining flour (600-650 g).

At the end, when kneading, poured in sunflower oil (this time I took refined).

She rolled the dough into a ball. It should not be too dense - you should not hammer it with flour. Let it stick a little to your hands (but just a little).

She covered it again and left it on the table. The dough rose quickly, in about 40 minutes. I hugged him and let him rise again (it took about the same time).

The dough was divided into 4 parts for convenience. And then I cut each of them into 10 approximately equal ones. I always bake exactly 40 larks - according to the number of the Sebastian holy martyrs. I do this even if I do not knead from 1250 grams of flour, as now, but from 500-600 g. It’s just that in the second case, the birds turn out to be small. And in today's version they are medium in size.

I formed a tourniquet from each part of the dough with my palms.

With a simple movement, she rolled it into a bundle.

Here's what happened:

She formed a head from the upper free end of the knot, slightly extended the nose. On the sides I inserted eyes from halves and quarters (depending on size) of raisins. To prevent the raisins from falling out during or after baking, before inserting them, I press a little indentations on both sides of the spout with a small knife. Then I insert a piece of raisins (you don’t need a whole one, even if it’s small it will fall out) and again press it deeper with a knife.

The second (lower) free end of the knot was slightly extended and cut in two places, as if separating the feathers.

By the same principle, I formed all 40 birds. Baked on foil (you can do without it), greased sunflower oil, 10 pieces on a baking sheet.

The birds need 25 minutes in the oven at a temperature of 180-200 "C.

Let the larks cool completely. Greased with sunflower oil on top and laid out on a dish.

OK it's all over Now! Festive, yellow, light and tasty larks are ready!

Recipe 8: Holiday Larks - Baking Options

• 5.5 cups of wheat flour and another half a cup for sprinkling the table, about 1 kg of flour in total;
• 2 glasses warm water;
• 30 g fresh yeast;
• 3 tablespoons of sugar;
• 3 tablespoons of sunflower oil;
• raisins - a smaller, darker shade is better suited for the eye, it looks more like a large light, amber raisin.

We knead the dough.

We crumble the yeast into a bowl, grind with sugar to a liquid state, pour in 1 cup of warm water, stir.

Sift 1.5 cups of flour.

Knead the dough and put on a warm water bath for half an hour.

Gently mix the approached dough, add the remaining glass of warm water and gradually, sifting, mix the flour - I added 4 cups one at a time. At the end of kneading, pour in sunflower oil.

It turns out a dense dough, a little steeper than usual for pies, so the larks will keep their shape well. Sprinkle the table with flour and knead the dough well so that it becomes homogeneous, smooth. Then sprinkle with flour on all sides so that it does not dry out and does not stick to the bowl, and again put in a water bath for 20 minutes.

Now the fun part - it's time to sculpt the larks!

We have tried 3 methods. The first one I liked the most. When they made the second batch, it became so easy and great to get it! The dough is over.

We make sausage.

Tie this sausage into a knot.

At one end we make a round head with a beak, cut the second with a knife, it turns out a fan - this is a tail.

We insert eyes from raisins. Stick them deeper so that they do not fall out when the dough rises.

We plant the larks on a baking sheet for proofing. As long as you blind everyone, they will just fit. I do this: I turn on the oven on a small light, and put the baking sheet on top of the stove. And the oven is warming up, and the buns are warm.

The second way.

We also roll up the sausage, but do not tie it, but simply fold it in the form of a loop.

The loop itself is the head, the tips are the wings. We cut the feathers with a fan, make eyes.

The third way. We make a cake, narrow on one side, on the other it expands.

At the narrow tip we make a beak and eyes, and a wide one, slightly pressing, cut into two - a tail and a wing.

We cut the “feathers” on the tail and wing, bend the wing up.

We spread the larks on a baking sheet not very close to each other, the distance between them should be at least 5-7 cm so that the baking that comes up does not stick together.

Sprinkle the larks with sugar, put in a warm oven and bake at 180-200 (depending on how it fits), I baked for 45 minutes.

Ready-made larks are very beautiful! Golden, and when you take it in your hands - warm! This is how spring feels!