Treat of the Week: An Easter Feast

The Easter Bunny was very good to us.  Well, to be more accurate, my mother was very good to us.  She prepared a magnificent day-long feast for my father, Bertie and me.  I thought, especially since you all seem to enjoy the “Treat of the Week,” that I would share images from that wonderful day with all of you.

I actually had the luxury of being at their house all weekend and I was granted a sneak peek into the inner workings of my mother’s magic kitchen.  She actually let me help a few times.  By “help,” I mean, I got to take pictures and cut out the parchment paper circles that lined the bottom of the cake pans.  But, to toot my own horn, I’m responsible each year for the stirring of the Easter risotto.  This, of course, is a job which could be done by a patient chimp, but it’s my proud contribution.

On Holy Saturday, while my father worked in the garden, my mother worked on the exceptional Easter cake.  We’re a cake family.  We love our cake, so, of course, we take every opportunity to eat as much cake as possible.  For almost two years now, you’ve looked at dozens of my mother’s homemade scratch cakes, but this one is truly grand.  Since I was a little boy, my mother has made checker-board cakes.  You’ve seen one on this site, in fact—last Easter.  But, this year, instead of chocolate and vanilla, my mother wanted to make a cake that would complement the flavor palette of the dinner she’d planned for Easter.  So, she concocted a new recipe.  Instead of chocolate, some of the squares in the cake would be flavored with lemon and saffron.

For those who aren’t familiar with saffron, it’s one of the dearest and most luxurious of the spices.  It’s the vivid red stigma of the crocus flower.  Each flower has three of them.  When cooked, they add a rich golden color and a subtle, elegant flavor.  Following her own instincts, my mother infused limoncello (a lemon liqueur) with saffron.  She heated this mixture very briefly so that the saffron’s color and flavor would be released.  Then, she added lemon juice and lemon zest.  This mixture would be added to half of the cake batter.  This flavor was selected since saffron is one of the primary seasonings in the risotto (see right) we’d be having with Easter dinner.  


The process went like this...

The cake batter came about after the separation of eggs, the creaming of butter, sugar and cake flower and the whipping of egg whites.  The egg whites were whipped into soft peaks.  See the video below--if you're using an iPad, the video may not work. which is curious since it was shot on an iPad.  It’s just as if  you were making meringue.  The fluffy egg whites were folded into the batter.  Then, half of the batter was infused with the saffron mixture.


It looked like this...

Using the same checkerboard cake pans she’s used since I was a wee lad, my mother arranged the two batters into the circles that, when cut, would show in the interior of the cake as a checkerboard.

Then, baking…

And, cooling.  There was enough batter to make two little Bundt cakes which we enjoyed on Saturday night.

And, then…icing.

First, lemon curd was spread atop each layer.  Then, my mother piped a wall of the butter cream icing she’d just made around the edge of each layer to keep the lemon curd filling in place.

The butter cream was separated into wee bowls.  The largest portion remained white to ice the cake.  The rest was divided into colored with gel food coloring into five springtime hues.

And, then, the artistic genius came in.  I was allowed to pipe one flower.  It wasn’t as pretty as the ones my mom did.

On Easter morning, we began with a breakfast of sausage and Easter Eggs.  I look forward every year to dying the eggs with my mom and dad.  I know, I’m thirty-eight and probably shouldn’t be as chuffed about these things as I am, but, I do anyway.  We always marbleize the eggs.  This is accomplished by first dying them one (or more) base colors.  Then, the dyed eggs are rolled in dishes containing food coloring and vinegar, and a little oil.  The oil doesn’t combine with the other media and, therefore, causes a marbling effect on the surface of the egg.  The finished eggs are then gently buffed to a shine with paper towels.

After breakfast, my mother began dinner—a lengthy process, but very much worth it.  We enjoyed roasted chickens with a sweet compote of oranges and berries, glazed carrots, a creamy risotto with saffron and peas, rolls and a lovely new dish—an asparagus and gruyere tart in a lovely homemade pastry shell.  Wonderful stuff!

The delicious meal ended with the gorgeous cake.  And, then, we watched Shari Lewis’ Lambchop’s Passover Surprise because we’re always interested in every culture, and I like puppets and, well…we’re just plain weird.  This was the only video I could find of it.  It's good enough to give you an idea of the sheer glory of it all.  If you watch it, the Passover Panda will make an extra trip to your house.