Easter recipes: time to bake, eat, and enjoy!
Easter is one of those holidays that combines all the best things in life: family, food, and festive traditions. With the arrival of spring and the weather turning a little bit warmer, it always feels like a great time to celebrate, especially if you’re lucky to get a bit of sunshine over the holiday weekend. In Scandinavia, like in many countries, Easter is a time of year for cooking, baking, and, most importantly, eating. So, in today’s post, we wanted to share our lineup of favorite Easter recipes – some sweet, some savory, and all very delicious. Here’s our countdown of the top 5 Easter essentials!
5. Easter cake: Påskekage
Let’s start with dessert, because why not? Påskekage, or our Easter cake, is a bright and cheerful centerpiece that captures the essence of spring. There’s truly no better time for a bright and lemony cake like this one. We love a simple powdered sugar icing and some lemon zest on ours for a clean look, but you can decorate with marzipan or chocolate eggs, or even edible flowers. It’s just as tasty as it is beautiful, with a light and moist sponge and a sharp lemon flavor. Plus, it’s the perfect way to put any decorative bundt cake pans you have to good use!
4. Easter lunch: Tarteletter
A staple of Danish Easter and Christmas lunches, tarteletter are crispy, flaky pastry shells filled with creamy chicken and asparagus sauce. Served warm, they’re comforting but also very flavorful and filling. Plus, they can be easily prepared ahead of time, making them ideal for a holiday gathering like Easter. And since the pastry shells used for tarteletter can be hard to come by outside of Denmark, our recipe includes how you can make them yourself at home. One bite and you’ll understand why they’re a must at any big Danish lunch!
3. Easter brunch: Hot cross buns
While hot cross buns aren’t originally Nordic, our recipe puts a Scandinavian spin on the classic British Easter bun. With flavors ranging from classic spiced raisin to blueberry and lemon to a cheesy savory version, the UK has truly mastered selling these buns at Eastertime. But add our Nordic one to the mix and it might just become your favorite of them all! Filled with candied orange peel and orange zest, a dash of cardamom, and plenty of white chocolate, they’re just a delight. And of course, they’re best enjoyed fresh from the oven with a generous smear of butter!
2. Easter bread: Påskereder
Translated as “Easter nests,” påskereder are not only an adorable festive bun to make, but the taste is unmatched. These individual sweet buns are braided into small nests and topped with chocolate eggs, whether you’d prefer a single Cadbury creme egg or multiple small and colorful Cadbury mini eggs. We love the idea of laying out a few of these on a serving platter for a beautiful centerpiece at an Easter brunch, or having them for breakfast. They’re also delicious toasted or heated up in the microwave in the days following (if there are any leftover).
1. Easter lunch: Smørrebrød
Coming in at number one: Smørrebrød, the iconic open-faced sandwich that’s the quintessential Danish holiday food. Easter lunch is the perfect occasion to go all-out with your toppings – pickled herring, liver pate, boiled eggs, shrimp with mayo, roast beef, crispy onions, and so on. Serve them on hearty Danish rye bread and if you’d like to, style each piece like a miniature work of art. Wash them down with plenty of beer and snap (akvavit), and you’ve completed a classic Danish Easter lunch experience!
Happy Easter!
Hopefully, the Easter recipes shared in today’s post can give you some inspiration for your own celebrations, or at least give you some insight into what Scandinavians, and particularly Danes, eat at Eastertime. To read more about the topic, check out our blog post sharing Scandinavian Easter food traditions here. We’d love to hear from you in the comments – are there any Easter recipes you’re looking for? What are your favorite things to bake at this time of year? Let us know and maybe we can come up with a recipe or two for you! Thanks for reading 😊
