By Rachel Rappaport of Coconut & Lime

Dia de los Muertos or Day of the Dead is a holiday celebrated mainly in Mexico and by people of Mexican heritage in other parts of the world. The celebration takes place on the 1st and 2nd of November which are also the Catholic holy days of All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day. Traditionally on the Day of the Dead people leave gifts-favorite foods, drinks and flowers on the graves of loved ones. If you are interested in seeing some of the items that are associated with Day of the Dead, check out this post at Mexico Cooks. There are also a few foods made specifically for Dia de los Muertos.

Perhaps the most popular of the Day of the Dead treats is Pan de Muerto. This bread,which translates to “bread of the dead” is described by Wild Yeast as being sweet and eggy like a yeast based coffeecake. You can check out her recipe here. One Whole Clove went a slightly different direction with her Pan de Muerto and made the loaf skull-shaped. Skulls are a common motif in Day of the Dead celebrations. While Pan de Muerto is frequently left at the grave site it is not unheard of for families to make extra or save a piece to enjoy themselves at home.

A second post on Mexico Cooks talks about what foods are left on the altar. According to her post they often include a dish filled with mole poblano, tamales, frijoles de la olla, different varieties of pan dulce, or the deceased favorite foods. Frequently there are also offerings of fresh, local produce.

Another tradtional food item is the sugar skull. Made in special skull shaped molds people make and decorate the skulls, often putting the name of a deseased loved on on the forehead. Over at These Foolish Things you will find a great tutorial on how to make your own sugar skulls. Not suprisingly, it takes a lot of sugar!

On a slightly less traditional note, The Scent of Green Banannas posted this Jell-o des Muertos which is a cute twist on the sugar skull. Heidi at 101 Cookbooks has an interesting recipe for skull cookies.

The Day of the Dead is celebrated outside of Mexico as well. In Guatemala, they celebrate by making fiambre which is a chilled salad that contains dozens of ingredients. You can find the recipe and more information here at Rainforest Recipes.

As always, you can find many mouth-watering Dia De Los Muertos recipes on the FoodieView Recipe Search Engine

Rachel Rappaport is a food writer and recipe creator who lives in Baltimore, Maryland. You can check out over 600 of her original recipes at her award winning food blog,Coconut & Lime.

This entry was posted on Monday, October 27th, 2008 at 8:42 am and is filed under Recipe Roundup. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.