Is your mouth watering over the Italian Easter desserts? Take a closer look at the different dessert items that make up a typical Italian Easter meal.
The Italian way to celebrate the holidays is by preparing a wonderful feast and sharing it with friends and family. As sweet as it does sound the Italians are very serious about their food and put in a lot of effort into it. When it comes to holiday feasts the food is all the more important because it is the main activity of the day in which the whole extended family participates. There are two basic rules to holiday feasts and those are that there should be good food and there should be lots of it.
The Easter celebrations have the women preparing food for the big day well in advance. In fact most people really look forward to Easter only because of the wonderful food that they get to eat. The zenith of Easter celebrations is however the desserts. Easter Sunday desserts are amongst the most colorful, sweet tasting and delicious treats that one can imagine. The Italians truly try and capture the whole festive mood within their desserts and hence they become a way to rejoice with the friends and families.
The desserts section
Amongst various different kinds of Italian Easter desserts is the Colomba Pasuale or the Easter dove. This is basically sweet bread that is made in the shape of a dove. Sweet bread is an integral part of the Easter dessert items list. This particular bread is filled with candied peel and sugar and almond toppings. There are a number of different versions of the Easter dove.
Many people make use of the scrumptious Marsala eggnog cream known as Zabaglione to dip their sweet bread into. Others will also use the cream to make a zabaglione filled Easter dove. You would see many bakers set up stalls on Easter Sunday who would be selling Pandiramerino which are actually Rosemary buns to people who would be returning from church. The buns used to represent Jesus and the rosemary stands were the symbolic representations of the scented oils that are believed to have been used to clean his body.
Then you have another Easter special in the form of the Italian Easter cake. Again you will find many variations in this wonderful dessert item. Some people even use the same cake mix to make small muffins. Making the Italian Easter cake is a relatively easy process as the majority of the ingredients and techniques are the same as what you use to prepare normal cakes with the exception of a few special ingredients like ricotta cheese.
Another item traditionally to be found on the tables during Easter is the Italian Easter cookies. This is also one of the specialties of the season and is much loved by the people of Italy. They prepare the cookies with colored icing to celebrate the festive season although some may make the cookies without the icing as well. There are also a number of variations of the Italian Easter pies that can be served as dessert items such as the Italian rice pie and the Italian ricotta pie.
