Easter Recipes

Welcome to Fabulous Fusion Food's Easter Recipes Page — This is the latest in my occasional series (beginning with Christmas Recipes) on festival foods and dishes. With Easter now on the way I thought I'd start next tackle this particular festival. Though considered a Christian festival these days Easter is basically an amalgam of various spring-time festival, celebrating the re-birth and re-awakening of the earth in a different guise. Almost all civilizations above the tropics have a version of the spring-time feast and various spring-time practices to do with re-birth and renewal. In the Romance and Celtic languages, the name of Easter derives from the Greek name, Pascha, which itself is derived from Pesach, the Hebrew festival of Passover.

In the Germanic languages the English name, 'Easter', and the German, 'Ostern', derive from the name of a putative Anglo-Saxon Goddess of the Dawn known variously as Ēaster, Ēastre, and Ēostre in various dialects of Old English and Ostara in German. In most Slavic languages, the name for Easter either means 'Great Day' or 'Great Night'. For example, Wielkanoc and Velikonoce mean 'Great Night' or 'Great Nights' in Polish and Czech, respectively. Великдень (Velikden', Velykden') and Вялікдзень (Vyalikdzyen') mean 'The Great Day' in Ukrainian, Bulgarian and Belarusian, respectively.

Easter is the most important of the religious festivals in the Christian liturgical year and celebrates the resurrection of Jesus, which Christians believe occurred on the third day after his crucifixion some time in the period AD 27 to 33. Many pagan elements have become part of the celebration, and those aspects are often celebrated by many Christians and non-Christians alike.

The image (left) shows a bowl of decorated eggs, as used for the centrepiece of an Easter table.

Easter is such an important celebration in the Christian calendar that it is hardly surprising that various culinary traditions have grown up around it. From Europe, through Africa, the Middle Easy and to the Americas there are drinks and dishes that are specifically served at Easter only.
Part of this tradition is to do with the fasting days of lent. The days leading up to Easter are meatless and either vegetarian or fish-based dishes only are served. The period of lent itself begins with Shrove Tuesday (also known as Pancake Tuesday) where the last of the year's rich produce is consumed. There are then meatless or lenten days leading up to Easter itself.

As well as being served for Easter it is also traditional to decorate eggs for Easter itself and many cakes and desserts are often decorated with eggs (originally coloured chicken eggs, though candy and chocolate eggs are often used today).

Good FridayEaster proper begins with Good Friday (also called Holy Friday or Great Friday), this being the Friday before Easter and commemorates the commemorates the crucifixion and death of Christ. It has long been traditional to eat hot cross buns on Good Friday and below are three recipes for this sweet, fruity bread and variants or derivatives thereof:

Hot Cross Buns
Hot Cross Lemon Cheese Tarts
Cornish Easter Saffron Cake
Bermudan Hot Cross Buns
Russki Kulich (Russian Easter Kulich or Paska)
Colomba di Pasquale (Italian Easter Dove Bread)

On the South Coast of England and Especially in Devon and Cornwall it's been traditional to serve a fish pie as the evening meal on Good Friday. Below is a link to two recipe for this type of:

Good Friday Fish Pie

Star-gazy Pie

Easter Saturday

The evening of Easter Saturday is traditionally time to decorate eggs or to make Easter eggs and Easter biscuits (cookies) which are then hidden around the house in preparation for the easter egg hunt on Sunday morning. Below are a few recipes for Easter eggs and biscuits:
Bunny Biscuits
Easter Biscuits
Glazed Easter Biscuits
Easter Bunny Biscuits
Koulourakia (Greek Easter Biscuits)
Easy Easter Praline Cookies
Gingerbread Easter Bunny Biscuits
Passover Almond Macaroons

Traditional sweet breads are served in Europe:
Easter Crown Bread

Easter Sunday

Easter Sunday was traditionally important as the time for Easter services. It is also the day for traditional Easter hunts for eggs and biscuits. Easter Sunday is the day for the main Easter meal and below are some suggestions for an Easter-themed dinner.

Certain snacks, such as tansies have been an essential part of the Easter celebrations for centuries. Often, they were flavoured with bitter herbs as a sign of penitence and this Easter Tansy recipe going back to the 15th century is a classic example of the fare:

Traditional Easter Tansy

Along with tansies, another traditional British (particularly from the North of England) Easter recipe is the Easter Ledge Pudding (it's not a dessert but a fried mix of wild greens and grains bound with egg).

For an Easter themed drink, why not try an Easter Tansy Cordial?

Here are some suggestions to get you through all the food for Easter Monday:

Easter Cakes and Sweet Breads

Chocolate Flowers Cupcakes
Passion Cake
Easter Chocolate Cupcakes
Chocolate Easter Loaf Cake
Tsoureki (Greek Easter Bread)
Paasbrood (Dutch Easter Bread)

Easter Biscuits (Cookies)

Easter Biscuits
Easter Lemony Chocolate Cake
Easter Egg Biscuits (Cookies)
Bunny Biscuits
Goosnargh Cakes
Figolli (Maltese Easter Biscuits)
Bares de Arequipe (Arequipe Bars)
Easter Garibaldi Biscuits

For the Kids

Chocolate Easter Nests
Easter Cake Pops
Home-made Creme Eggs
Gelatine Easter Eggs
Bunny Corn Recipe

Easter Monday

In past times the Easter season lasted from the beginning of Lent (Ash Wednesday) until Easter itself, with the purpose of Lent (with its associated abstinence from meat and dairy) being the preparation of the believer — through prayer, repentance, almsgiving and self-denial — for the annual commemoration during Holy Week of the Death and Resurrection of Jesus, which recalls the events linked to the Passion of Christ and culminates in Easter, the celebration of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. In Britain, traditional observance of Lent lasted well into the 18th century, and Hannah Glasse, in her book: The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy (1747) devotes a whole chapter to Lent Dinner Dishes. One of the major festivals during this period was mid-Lent Sunday (now Mothering Sunday) where the devout parishioners went to the Mother Church of the parish, or the Cathedral of the diocese, to make their offerings. Sometime in the 17th Century the day became the festival of human motherhood when the whole family met together and apprentices and servants were given the day off – probably the only holiday in the year – and took flowers gathered from the hedgerows and, sometimes the gift of a simnel cake to their mothers from their employers. This is how Simnel cake became associated with Easter.

Though Simnel cake is now an Easter cake it began as a cake for Mothering Sunday. The cakes themselves are known from Medieval times and it's likely that the word 'Simnel' itself derives from the Latin simila, meaning fine as the wheat flour from which the cakes were made was the finest milled at the time. All Simnel cakes tend to be very rich but some are simple, some use yeast doughs and some use a creamed mixture. The recipe below is for a 'Shrewsbury Simnel'. Basically flour, spices and fruit. All Simnel cakes are covered in white almond paste and decorated with 11 almond paste balls (all the apostles with the exception of Judas).

Originally Simnel cake was a case of hard pastry, coloured gold with saffron and filled with all types of dried fruit. In later years the fruit filling became a fruitcake and the pastry was replaced by marzipan.

The original Medieval Simnel Cake (actually a pie) recipe is given below:
Medieval Simnel Cake Recipe

Below are two modern recipes for Simnel cake, the first made with yeast and the second made without yeast (using baking powder as a leavening agent) and the third adapted into a teabread:
Traditional Yeasted Simnel Cake
Decorated Simnel cake Recipe
Easter Teabread Recipe

This next recipe is for an Swedish lenten bun, Semla, that, like hot cross buns, can be eaten throughout the Easter season. Versions of this bun, vastlakukkel, laskiaispulla or fastlagsbulle/fastelavnsbolle are also made in Finland, Estonia, Norway, Denmark, the Faroe Islands and Iceland, respecitvely:
Swedish Easter Semla recipe

On Ash Wednesday, at the very beginning of the Easter period salt cod was commonly eaten and this recipe for salt cod comes from Mrs Beeton's classic Victorian cookbook.

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Easter Recipes

Easter Saturday

Easter Sunday

Breakfast

Easter Starters and Soups

Easter Main Course Accompaniments

Easter Meat and Fish Main Courses

Easter Desserts

Easter Cakes and Sweet Breads

Easter Biscuits (Cookies)

For the Kids

Easter Monday

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