Like Christmas, Easter provides the keen cook with the opportunity to spend hours in the kitchen. There’s the traditional dinner of roast lamb – the springtime counterpart to the roast turkey Christmas dinner.
And when it comes to baking, Easter offers its own slightly lighter variants of Christmas delights, which stlll contain many of the same ingredients, specifically dried fruit, nuts and marzipan. Instead of the heavy fruited Christmas cake there’s the simnel cake, which can be made at the last minute, dispenses with the icing and makes a real feature of the marzipan. And the dense alcohol-rich fruited filling of the mince pie gives way to the lightly fruited and spiced hot cross bun.
Where Easter differs from Christmas – as far as this blog is concerned, however – is in the paucity of references to Easter, let alone Easter food, in literature.
Literature abounds with references to Christmas food: from the feast at King Arthur’s court in the 14th century poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight to mince pies in Pride and Prejudice, Christmas cake in Jane Eyre and Christmas meals in A Christmas Carol, The Mill on the Floss and Sons and Lovers. Here food is abundant, a symbol of generosity and celebration. The festival – and the food made to celebrate it – bring together family and friends, welcome in outsiders (Sir Gawain) and both precipitate, and mark, transformation (A Christmas Carol).
Easter is a very different kind of feast from Christmas. Whilst, from the Christian perspective, it is the high point of the Church’s year, celebrating the resurrection of Christ after his death on the Cross, it does not have the impact in secular society that Christmas does. Although a holiday in the West, and families may well gather together and eat too much chocolate, there is not the same emphasis on festivity and celebration. Perhaps the challenging period of Lent and the events of Good Friday that precede it, and the complexity of understanding what Christians believe happened on Easter Day, make it too difficult a festival for many people to engage with.
Obviously some writers do write about Easter in their literature, with some tackling its Christian message. In his poem ‘Easter wings’ – cleverly patterned as a pair of wings – the metaphysical poet and cleric George Herbert (1593-1633) celebrates his redemption from sin through Christ’s death and resurrection:
Other writers focus on key ideas and themes of Easter without writing specifically about Christian belief. The Irish poet W. B. Yeats (1865-1939) in ‘Easter 1916’ honours his fellow Irishmen who lost their lives in, or were imprisoned or executed for their part in, the Easter rising of that year. Yeats weaves the themes of transformation and rebirth throughout the poem. In lines such as ‘Transformed utterly’ and ‘All changed, changed utterly’, he describes how his belief that the rebels’ fight was pointless changed as a result of their endeavours, and also how the fighters themselves were transformed by martyrdom: ‘A terrible beauty was born’.
The idea of Easter as a time of renewal and new beginnings also appears in Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (1775-1817), for it is at Easter that Mr Darcy proposes – for the first time – to Elizabeth Bennet. Elizabeth has gone to Kent to visit Charlotte, her best friend, who has recently married the obsequious Mr Collins. At this stage in the novel Elizabeth has rejected Mr Collins’ proposal, and any partiality Mr Wickham formerly showed to her has dissipated with the announcement of his engagement to Miss King. Prior to this, Elizabeth’s encounters with Mr Darcy have been awkward, and at times almost hostile. Now in Kent, ‘Easter was approaching’ and Mr Darcy arrives to stay with his aunt, Lady Catherine de Bourgh.
Whilst the proposal is not accepted, it marks a significant turning point in the novel – a new beginning if you like. Darcy’s interest in Elizabeth is now manifest and the various ups and downs of a literary love affair can begin.
But in all these Easter texts and episodes, there is not one mention of food. And as I found when writing about hot cross buns and simnel cake in previous posts, the references are few and far between.
So, that gives me a free hand to cook what I like. And when I was thinking about Easter, I remembered the Dutch Easter bread – or Paasstol – that my Mum always used to make at Easter.
Paasstol is a fruited bread with marzipan running through it – and if you think that sounds like the German Christmas bread, Stollen, you’d be right! The Dutch bake this bread for both Christmas and Easter, with the Christmas version known as ‘Kerststol’ and the Easter one ‘Paasstol’. According to some recipes there is no difference between the two versions, though one recipe I read said that ‘Paasstol’ has flaked almonds on the top and ‘Kerststol’ doesn’t, so I tried that here (though they didn’t stick easily to the melted butter, so you might like to omit them!). Where dried fruit is concerned, Mum only used glace cherries, so although I have included raisins, I used more glace cherries than the recipes suggested, as a reminder of this childhood treat.
DUTCH EASTER BREAD
Ingredients (for 1 large loaf):
250ml milk (warmed)
10g dry yeast (2 teaspoons)
1 tbsp sugar
2 large eggs
50g butter, melted and cooled
500g strong white flour
200g dried fruit (I used raisins and glace cherries)
Grated zest of 1 lemon
250g marzipan
Melted butter, icing sugar and flaked almonds to coat the top after it has baked
Method:
Sieve the flour, salt and sugar into a mixing bowl. Stir in the yeast and then and make a well in the centre. Add the milk, eggs and melted butter. Mix well.
Work in the fruit and lemon zest, and then knead for 5-10 minutes.
Place in a greased bowl, cover and leave to rise until doubled in size – this will take at least one hour depending on the warmth of the environment.
Turn out the risen dough onto a lightly floured work surface. Punch it down and then stretch / roll out to a rectangle – approximately 38 x 30 cm (15 x 12 inches).
Roll out the marzipan to form a sausage shape and place it along the centre of the dough, finishing just short of the edges.
Fold the dough over the marzipan, making sure it is sealed at the join. Then carefully lift the bread onto a lightly greased baking sheet, allowing plenty of room for expansion. Cover and leave to rise again until it has doubled in size.
In the meantime, preheat the oven to 190C, 170C fan, Gas mark 5.
Bake the bread for 30-40 minutes until golden brown.
When baked, remove from the oven, leave to cool for 5 minutes and then brush with melted butter and sprinkle with sieved icing sugar and flaked almonds.
Eat thick slices – buttered if you like.
