by Lisa of La Mia Cucina

Wow.. I had no idea how many fantastic Easter ideas were out there! So many creative and delicious recipes to sift through! You know, Easter hasn’t been a big deal to my family since my father passed. So every Easter since then has pretty much meant morning mass, followed by ham, scalloped potatoes and a couple other side dishes not really worthy of mentioning. Then we pack up half of it, send it home with my mom and the rest of us would pretty much well.. nap. No kids in the family so no fun easter egg hunts or pretty baskets to fill with mouth watering homemade treats.

Now I realize there is much more to Easter than egg hunts, filled baskets and delicious dinners. But ya’ll have to admit, for many of us, these things are traditional and important to our families. It’s super easy to get into a rut and make the same things each year - heck that’s true for every holiday or yearly event. So I’m hoping that ya’ll will find something new in the round up below, because I sure did! I’m even thinking about baskets for ADULTS to fill with some of these treats.. no fair it’s just for kids! Right?!

I’m going to start out with a few traditional Easter breads from several different nationalities. I remember a couple of these breads from my childhood.. my aunt would make them for us and although we were eyeing those baskets, the bread was always welcomed and devoured the next day.

One that I remember is this sweet bread with a light hit of anise and colorful Easter eggs baked right in! Just like this one that Elaine at The Italian Dish makes for her kids. My Aunt never put sprinkles on ours though. These braided loaves look almost too good to eat! Gorgeous, Elaine!

This bread looks amazingly delicious to me and is something my husband would love as well for his Easter breakfast.. stuffed with hard boiled egg, bacon, chorizo and morcilla sausages, this traditional Spanish Easter bread called Hornazo is brought to our attention by Amy & Jonny at We’re Never Full - thanks so much guys! I cannot wait to try this!

A traditional Greek Easter bread is called Tsoureki and who else would I go to for the recipe? Peter of Kalofagas, of course! And he didn’t disappoint, not only did he share with us his traditional recipe but the photos were wonderful as well. Although I’ve never had the pleasure of trying this bread, it sounds so flavorful and I’ll bet the aroma of the Mahlab, Mastic and citrus is heavenly. Peter reminds us that Greece celebrates Easter on April 19th this year. Happy Easter, Peter!

Finally, to round out the bread portion of this round up is the lovely Rosa of Rosa’s Yummy Yums. I had first discovered her Easter bread that she shaped into a lamb and thought immediately, “How adorable, I must add this to the round up!” and when she replied to my request to use it, she told me about another bread that she would be posting Sunday morning called Columba Pasquale. I was intrigued and couldn’t wait to see. Once ya’ll go take a look and read about how it tasted, you’ll understand how happy I was when I saw that she had posted it. This is another Italian Easter bread, but one I am not familiar with. I can guarantee though, I won’t forget about it after reading her reaction after she tasted it..

Moving along to homemade candy for basket stuffing.. I knew I wanted to include a few items along this line because we’re foodies. And we’re in a recession. And it’s a holiday! So why go and buy the same old Reeses Cups and Snickers bars when you can make DELICIOUS homemade candy that the kids (and adults!) will absolutely love to look at AND taste - for a fraction of what it’d cost to buy the same old bagged and boring stuff?

For instance.. how adorable are these Bird’s Nests and Peanut Butter Eggs, made by Mo at Fare to Remember?? And they are so easy to make! Mo did a fabulous job with these little treats and I’m sure ya’ll will agree once you’ve read the post.

Speaking of peanut butter eggs (a personal favorite of mine!) check out these beauties! Lisa of My Own Sweet Thyme has created the most picture perfect confections that I’ve seen in a long while.. how happy would you be to either receive these from someone you love - or - see the face of the person you made them for when they discovered them in their Easter basket? So pretty and so YUMMY! These are made with a peanut butter fudge - yanno for that added decadence factor.

These next “lollipops” are the cutest things EVER. I know I keep saying that about all of the treats I’ve found, but I can’t help it.. sue me. Seriously though - check out these Easter Bunny Brownie-Pops made by Linda of Cake on the Brain. Go look.. right now! We’ll wait.. .. .. ..

Okay now go look at the Easter CHICKIES on a stick!!! Recipe is included in this link for the bunnies and the chicks. Can someone please tell me why I can’t be this creative??? Love them, Linda!

So now we’ve had our bread.. and we’ve decided which treat we’re going to make for our loved one’s baskets.. let’s jump right to dessert, shall we??

This was the first Easter dessert recipe I found as I wanted to include yet another traditional Italian offering (hey, I’m Italian.. what else did you expect?) And I found this gorgeous Pastiera di Grano (Easter Wheat Pie) on Maryann’s Finding la Dolce Vita. I love how she made this recipe from a cookbook that her grandmother acquired shortly after relocating to the U.S. in honor of her grandparents. I’ve ate this pie before and it’s delicious. The perfect ending to a lovely Easter dinner.

Next is something a lil - no, hugely - funny. Laura Rebecca featured this Peeps on The Lawn dessert salad. HOW FUNNY! All the lil peeps sitting on the creamy green salad. What’s better is that this salad not only features Peeps, but it’s also got Jell-o Pudding, Cool Whip, SNICKERS bars and hard candy coated chocolate eggs in it. HAR! That is so wrong that it just seems right to me.

When asking permission to use her photograph, LR also turned me on to this Peeps and Sweet Potato Casserole. It’s French you know. Regardless, it sounds delish! I’m totally making this as I loves me some marshmallow-sweet potato-y goodness.

Another way to use up some of that left over Easter candy is to make this divine Malted Mousse Cake by Lori of Recipe Girl. Lori says this is a cross between a cheesecake and a mousse, but all I heard was NOM NOM NOM NOM *slurp*

And to finish up this incredible sweet round up I’m including a whole category from Melody’s My Sweet and Saucy blog. You will be AMAZED at what she’s created. You might even damn the Pastry God’s for not giving you the talent to come up with such beautiful creations.. but most of all, you’ll be copying these recipes and tips/tricks into wherever you keep cherished recipes. Here’s just a sample of what Melody has to offer - Sweet Melissa’s Fluffy Coconut Cake with Passion Fruit Filling. Someone hold me?

Happy Easter to all that celebrate it! May everyone have a glorious day!

xoxo

For more delicious Easter recipe ideas try the FoodieView Recipe Search Engine

You can also learn more about Lis at her blog, La Mia Cucina.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 6th, 2009 at 3:34 pm 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.