Ted has nice buns ....

… and they are just a tiny part of my Easter goodies arsenal I might add ...  The world celebrates Easter with a range of edible temptations, which I guess is only fitting if you have followed the Christian tradition of giving up all things tasty and interesting for the entirety of the 40 long long days leading up to Easter known as Lent.  It starts on Ash Wednesday which is when people give up smoking in the UK. They have been meaning to do this since they vowed off alcohol for all of January after the New Year’s Eve parties.  From what I can tell this generally lasts until about the 14^th of January, which according to the old Julian calendar is actually New Year’s Day.

Easter goodies come in all shapes and sizes.  Hot Cross buns have the cross going on so no prizes for guessing what they represent.  The Doll has pointed out to me that to be traditionally accurate they should actually be eaten on Good Friday. Nowadays the Easter egg hunt is the big event of Easter Sunday, along with a good roast lamb dinner with friends and family.

Most Christian countries have their own edible traditions. In Italy they have the Colomba de Pasqua, a cake shaped like a dove which is a great tasting gesture of peace.  In Russia, Paska, a pyramid made from cheese... umm yeah nice.  In Greece Tsoureki, a sweet bread with candied peel and decorated with brightly coloured hard boiled eggs. In Mexico Capirotada is a kind of spiced Mexican bread pudding filled with raisins, cinnamon, cloves and cheese.  In fact when you start looking around, most of the world eats cakes or buns with similar ingredients for Easter, and most of them are equally great toasted with butter on top (just thought I’d throw that in).

The ever popular Simnel cake is a fruit cake with a layer of marzipan on top with 11 sort of blob slash round balls on top – these are of course the 12 apostles minus Judas (it's just so easy to spot an apostle disguised as a round marzipan ball that I am truly not sure how I missed it to be honest!!).

There are also peculiar Easter customs and traditions like in Scotland and Northern England called “egg rolling” where they send coloured eggs rolling down steep hills and then send the children down after them.  This toughens them up and prepares them to compete in the great cheese rolling competition in Gloucestershire in May ... apparently ...