In France there is a most charming tradiition of hand made chocolate easter eggs. For our family we never buy easter eggs in the super market, ready wrapped with a designer logo, but prefer to go to the local bakers and buy a selection of their in-house treats.
Traditionally there are the eggs of course, but also chickens, rabbits, fish and bells. The eggs are generally tied with a pretty ribbon and filled with 'friture', tiny chocolate fish and seashell shapes, that can also be bought separately for decoration.
Of course we could also go to a big chic chocolate store in Paris and buy some 'power' chocolates but frankly ...
...I prefer the low-key local approach, just as delicious and way prettier, in my humble opinion.
So tell me, what are your easter treats?
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Chocolate almost too pretty to eat...almost!
ReplyDeleteThese easter eggs are beautiful, I remember seeing them last Easter when we were there, also the very first time we saw and heard about the "fish" that makes so perfect reason of course.
ReplyDeleteNow that our Dd is older, the hunts less crowded, we induldge in a handfull of handmade eggs and bon bons, from a favorit chocolatier in a nearby village-Franschoek.~ they use Belgian chocolate in the process.
Apart from that the good old Lindt bunny remains my favorit and we have a chocolate and sweet company(Beacon) that make soft marshmallow and chocolate covered eggs with yellow marchmallow vanilla yolk inside. these are sold by the box, and they will remain a favorit forever I think.perhaps these are the eggs that todlers start with..I remember them since I was a child.
thank you for sharing these realy pretty eggs. Colette x
Here in Hungary we carefully blow out the chicken eggs( yolk and white used for cakes anyway) and paint with wax ornaments on them after that we boil them in colored water. Coloring with onion skin(makes dark red)or indigo making blue or dadelion making yellow.
ReplyDeleteThe young girls will be visited on Easter monday by the boys reciting verses and pouring the girls with water as to stay fresh for the whole year. Dorka from the great Hungarian Plain
Pretty as the more opulent eggs are, we always go for basic simple chocolate eggs with a high cocoa mass, the darker the better.
ReplyDeletePaul
I can't get over how beautiful those are. How do you ever eat them?
ReplyDeleteDo you know what I really, really want right now??? Chocolat, my friend... chocolat! ;-)
ReplyDeleteHave a wonderful day!
xo
Luciane at HomeBunch.com
PS: If you a minute, please drop by to enter my Giveaway! :-)
Beautiful works of art, really! I am amazed at what one can create with Chocolat!
ReplyDeleteGreat tradition! We have play: looking for eggs in the garden, but only in some area of my country. But we make lambs from butter :) I love all these chocolat eggs!
ReplyDeleteBest wishes from Poland, full of Easter signs :)
marta
Wow! What amazing Easter eggs!
ReplyDeleteI miss the Easter eggs we used to get in Australia - large ones wrapped in foil. It was our tradition on Easter Sunday to go outdoors, and roll them down the driveway to break them (they wouldn't break if you just tried to bit into one!)
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ReplyDeleteThose eggs are just beautiful. I LOVE anything with gorgeous handwriting on it.
ReplyDeleteOne year I made the sugar eggs that have a scene inside them. You have to have a two piece mold to press the white sugar in. It was a lot of work and very messy but the results were worth it. So much nicer than the ones they sell in shops.
Too pretty to eat!
ReplyDeleteMy Easter treats begin with family, church services, good food, possibly new clothes and Easter baskets and treats for "grandchildren"! In addition, to those things your beautiful post is a early Easter treat just for me! Thank you.
ReplyDeleteWould love to see the little roosters, would love to see those here in the US. Hugs Mary
ReplyDeleteSuch beautiful photos! Reminds us of when we lived in Brussels and we could buy fabulous handmade eggs from our local chocolatier. The eggs are much more ordinary here in Ireland but then again the children love their Cadbury eggs!
ReplyDeleteWe have a favorite candy store called See's Candies...our family and friends consider any candies by See's to be the best. They have all kinds of Easter treats. The eggs you've shown look delicious.
ReplyDeleteKaren
Now that the children are grown, the daughter who still lives with us hides dark chocolate treasures around the house for the old folks to find. We don't look for them all at once, that would spoil the fun, instead we wait until a chocolate craving grabs us to snag one from under the sofa or behind the sugar bowl. What glee for us gray hairs!
ReplyDeleteThere are small chocolate eggs, jelly beans in all kinds of different flavors, "peeps" in a variety of colors and always a chocolate bunny( preferably dark chocolate) and hard boiled eggs decorated for hiding!
ReplyDeleteDear Sharon,
ReplyDeleteJust in case you and/.or your readers aren't familiarr with David Sedaris's wrackingly funny essay (in his collection of humorous essays, "Me Talk Pretty One Day"), here are some of the funniest lines/passages. In this essay, the Parisian professeur is attempting to encourage her students (among whom are an American, an Italian nanny, two Poles, and a Moroccan woman) to discuss (in French) their "own" Easter traditions. this is one of those horrible "immersion classes" that nearly everyone drops after a month.
Of course, the teacher is immediately asked by the Moroccan student "Excuse me, but what is an Easter?"....and the teacher calls upon the rest of the class to explain "Easter" (do recall they are all beginning French students).
Various students (all quite adults) offer up the following in the faltering French:
"It is a party the for the little boy of God who call his self Jesus and...."
"He call his self Jesus and then he die one day on two morself of...lumber"
"He die one day and then he go above of my head to live with your father"
"He weared of himself the long hair and after he die, the first day he come back here to say helloes for the peoples."
"He nice, the Jesus"
"He make the good things and on the Easter we be sad because somebody makes him dead today"
"Easter is party for to eat of the lamb", the Italian nanny explained. "One may eat too of the chocolate"
"And who brings the chocolate?" the teacher asked.
I knew the word, so I raised my hand, saying "The Rabbit of Easter. He bring of the chocolate.".....The teacher sighed and shook her head..."No, no", she said, "Here in France the chocolate is brought by a big bell that flies in from Rome"
I called for a time-out. "But how do the bell know where you live?"
"Well," she said, "how does a rabbbit?"...
The author counters. thinking "..Why fly one in from rome when they've got more bells than they know what to do with right here in Paris?....and there's no way the bells of France would allow a foreign worker to fly in and take their jobs..."
Predictably enough, the whole passage ends with:
"Nothing we said was of any help to the Moroccan student. A dead man with long hair supposedly living with her father, a leg of lamb served with palm fronds and chocolate; equally confused and disgusted, she shrugged her massive shoulders and turned her attention back to the comic book she kept hidden beneath her binder."
Ijust love that passage......
Happy Easter,
David Terry
www.davidterryart.com
I loved your post on Easter chocolate and all of the wonderful comments about Easter traditions (David had me rolling on the floor!). Growing up in Brussels then living in Paris after college, I certainly developed a taste for the oversized eggs that held more surprises. When we visited our cousins in Florence at Easter, the farmer roasted a leg of lamb over an open spit. While back in the States, I still try to "decorate" for Easter brunch with flowering bulbs, hand-dyed eggs, and Lindt chocolate bunnies hoping around the table. But besides all of the extras that Easter brings, what I love the most is being with my family! Have a wonderful weekend Sharon, Cynthia
ReplyDeleteMmmm ... good eggs!
ReplyDeleteHave you a good Easter!
Oh to have a chocolate french bunny from a bakery! I would want the bunny so I could bite it's ears off first! We always look forward to getting the Cadbury candy coated eggs (I've got a bag hidden in the pantry just for me!) Of course there is always the colored real eggs to eat as well!
ReplyDeleteHappy Easter, kim
http://whitebarnbasics.blogspot.com/
Oh, I loved seeing what was in the shops there! How very fun. I love both...humble homemade treats and some store bought favorites. I do enjoy putting together baskets for my family...I don't think they will ever outgrow it..at least I hope not! I have too much fun doing it!
ReplyDeleteI could eat that whole large chocolate egg after I look at it a long time ...love the eggs
ReplyDeleteHi Sharon, As I am now in California, II brought my own bag of chocolate eggs from a local chocolatier in Belgium, so no Easter without the chocolate eggs. Joyeuses Pâques
ReplyDeleteJohan
Growing up my sister & I always had the supermarket variety of chocolate rabbits in an Easter basket, it worked, we were happy, lol. My girls have been spoiled every Easter when they get chocolates from a wonderful shop nearby called Burdick Chocolate. Absolutely exquisite chocolates beautifully packaged! Love the chocolate chickens!!
ReplyDeleteOh my these look delicious - maybe too good to eat!
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