Easter Desserts: Chocolate Eggs and Easter Cakes 2016/03/24

Time of… Spring. Spring also means Easter.

…and Easter, in the Italian tradition, it means big binges and… candies and desserts!!!

In the “Bel Paese”, Italy, there are two traditional sweets for Easter: the chocolate egg and the dove shaped cake.

Since ancient Egypt, exchanges of chicken eggs are documented at the arrival of spring, boiled with leaves and flower infusions to dye their shells.

During the Middle Ages, also with motive for Easter, eggs were gifted to the servants, while the nobles exchanged gold, silver and precious stones decorated eggs.

In Europe, in the XIX century, dark chocolate solid eggs were gifted, because the process of the cacao paste was primitive. The progress allowed the English man John Cadbury, in 1875, to invent a machine to make hollow chocolate eggs and put something inside them: almonds, candies or gifts. The Cadbury Company continues production of candy to this day.

When milk was incorporated to chocolate, egg production gave a huge leap of quality.

Today large distributers offer an extensive variety of milk chocolates, with almonds or hazelnuts, extra dark or white chocolate, but over all dedicated to the children.

Artisanal bakeries, on the other hand, make decorated eggs where you can hide a surprise or gift inside them, given by the own client.

The Easter cake has the shape of a dove because, in Christian symbolism, it represents peace and salvation.

The cake is divided in two main categories: the Lombarda version (north of Italy) which the most commercialized and the Sicilian, which is the oldest one, but very extended especially in the south of Italy.

In the 1930’s decade, a candy factory in Lombardia (Motta), using machinery to make winter candies, it was tried to make a pastry with candied orange peel in the dough and glassed with almonds, originating what the leaven Easter cake as we know it today.

In Sicilia Italy traditional Easter candies are produced, like the palummeddi, which is a cinnamon bread shaped like a dove or basket, decorated with a rooster and thanks to its shape it can hold one or more hard eggs, which are decorated with braids, dots and cuts on top of the dough.

Italian Easter doves, have been included in the official list of P.A.T (Prodotti Agrolimentari Tradizionali Italiani) by the Agriculture, Alimentary and Forest Politics Ministry and recognized as traditional territorial products.

Happy Easter!