"Special foods for Easter Traditional around world" from the April 11, 1968 Door County Advocate
By GRACE SAMUELSON
Special foods for Easter Traditional around world
By GRACE SAMUELSON
Easter baskets, egg rolling, and Easter bonnets are traditional during this season. But there are traditions in foods, too. We start baking Hot Cross buns on Ash Wednesday, and throughout Lent. Then there's the Easter ham. We color eggs, and serve springlike desserts.
Originally, Hot Cross buns were baked only on Good Friday. These spicy sweet rolls, usually filled with raisins or currants and candied fruits, always have the distinctive cross of frosting on the top. English monks were said to have begun the custom by baking the rolls to distribute among the poor on Good Friday. Later, the use of these buns became common, especially on Wednesdays during Lent. Some say that the sign of the cross on each bun was to protect the baking from evil spirits, especially on Good Friday, the unluckiest day of the year.
On Palm Sunday, many people in England would share little cakes called Pax cakes—the Latin word for peace. Pax cakes were used to patch up quarrels in those days.
In some European countries there were special cakes to commemorate Maundy Thursday, the day Christ washed the feet of the disciples. In Czechoslovakia, children were served cakes called Judases. They were of braided dough, to represent the rope Judas used. In Yugoslavia they shaped the dough to look like birds, and called them turtle doves. These also were to remind people of the death of Judas.
Then, on Holy Saturday, the women in most European countries got all of their baking done for Easter Sunday. Fancy sweet breads, made in various shapes, and with varied ingredients, became famous in many regions. As immigrants came to America, they brought with them their traditional recipes, and so a good many have been adopted in our country.
Many Scandinavians mark Lenten Tuesdays by eating a dessert called fastelavnboller. These are yeast-raised rolls, filled with almond paste, topped with whipped cream and served in deep dishes with hot milk, sugar, and vanilla or cinnamon.
The Polish Easter bread is called Babka, which means an old woman with wide skirts. That is because it is baked in a baba (or mold much like an angel food pan). It also has candied fruits and raisins, and sometimes is saturated with a rum syrup immediately after baking. In Czechoslovakia, they say that young girls sometimes put love messages on colored Easter eggs and present them to their boyfriends with the Babka.
The Swiss and the Italians make coffee cake for Easter. They use a braided ring, in which colored raw eggs are placed and baked with the cake. This makes a spectacular treat.
In old Russia Kulich was the Easter bread for the Orthodox Easter Sunday. This is a high, tower-like affair, frosted and marked on top with the letters X V, which were initials meaning "Christ is Risen." They say that the Kulich was so delicate that homemakers put pillows around the pan where it was rising, so it would not fall, They even kept children and husbands with heavy boots out of the kitchen until it came from the oven!
Panettone, an Italian Easter specialty, were sweet breads with citron, raisins, pinon nuts and anise seeds. A deep cross was cut in the top of each, and the loaves were brushed with egg before baking. In some homes the dough is shaped in the form of a cross, or woven into nests or baskets.
In some Slavic countries, worshippers carry baskets of Easter food to church to be blessed, and in other places the priest comes to the homes to bless foods they have arranged on tables decorated with flowers. Many children are trained in the Slavic countries to do the intricate decorations on colored eggs.
Other foods may hold the center of interest. In our family an Easter Bunny cake was a tradition. Marshmallow bunnies and nests of candy eggs reposed on "grass," made of cocoanut colored with vegetable coloring. Then there are cakes cut and frosted in the shape of rabbits or Easter baskets made from popcorn or cereal. The form lamb-cakes also make pretty centerpieces.
In some countries, it is said to be good luck If you can have fresh greens (spinach or lettuce) on Good Friday. And Good Friday is said to be the proper day for planting sweet peas.
Whether the hard-cooked eggs are decorated by the Easter Rabbit, or by the children, they can later be used in salads and other dishes. And Jello eggs, shaped in blown egg shells, are a pretty addition to the table. (Ed. Note: Break egg shell carefully at one end, remove egg for baking and rinse shell with cold water. Fill shell with cooled jello made with 1½ cups water to one pkg. of your favorite flavor. When jello has set, remove egg shell gently, and you have a jello egg.)
You may plan to have ham, lamb, chicken or turkey for your Easter dinner, but the chances are that some special treat will be that of a family tradition. And for this most important holiday of the religious year, perhaps we can initiate some traditions of our own, and make our Easter all the more blessed.
Courtesy of the Door County Library Newspaper Archive
[Another spelling for fastelavnboller is fastelavnsboller.]
Articles by Grace Samuelson
https://doorcounty.substack.com/t/grace-samuelson