In Switzerland there is also carrot cake, but no cream cheese icing. This came up in my Facebook feed last week, so it’s also popular here. Powdered sugar is more common as a topper, sometimes vanilla icing.
I never had carrot cake for Easter as a child, it’s not something my parents make often. When I was little my mom took a cake decorating class, and would make decorated cakes for all holidays. So we each got a little egg shaped cake with our name on it for Easter. And we’d have rice pudding.
I doubt it. In my family, it was breakfast. After the kids retrieved all the Easter eggs from the backyard, my mother would slice them up, and serve them with biscuits and gravy. But in families who are regular churchgoers, brunch would probably be more practical. And in families who got together with more distant relatives for the holiday, dinner would be more convenient.
In our family it was traditionally an early dinner. Usually around 3pm. It has been very odd the last 2 years not have Easter Dinner. My sister has hosted it for decades now.
There is something about carrot cake and the time of year, because my mother always baked one for our “Thank goodness Passover is over, let’s have some bread” meal.
It’s possible that gardens were planted a little bit before, and since carrots come up pretty fast, late March to mid-April was when you’d want to get rid of any carrots you had left in the cellar, and grating them for something like bread or cake with lots of oil is a good way of disguising how old they are.
I have my mother’s recipe, and in fact, it does have a ton of oil. I adapted it into a really good carrot muffin recipe. Less oil, grated carrots, instead of pulverized, some baking soda in addition to the baking powder, and a teaspoon of high gluten flour. I also add in some raisins. Make them all times of the year.
She was a war baby (b. 1940), so if it was a war thing, she probably had it in her childhood.
For us, it’s an early dinner as well (anywhere from 2-4 p.m.) That said, our Sunday dinners are always early dinners, so it’s not really off the normal Sunday schedule. And, yes, the dinner is the big meal for our family and for most of the families I grew up with – at least as I remember. Even looking outside earlier today, I could see all the families gathering in the early afternoon.
In the UK, old tradition would have hot cross buns on Good Friday (but in the last few decades they’re available all year round) and simnel cake for Easter Sunday (or sometimes at an earlier point in Lent) - but that is now relatively rare, though you do see them in the shops. AFAIK there is no particular dessert item particularly associated with Easter. FWIW, Marks &Spencer’s TV adverts for their Easter meal deal that I’ve seen have been pushing cheesecake this year.
And also FWIW, the wartime generation who had to make do with cakes and desserts made with carrots or parsnips were only too glad to see the back of them. US-style carrot cakes are relatively recent over here.
We always had a dairy meal at the end of Passover, because so many people wanted to have pizza. That meant that we could have cream cheese frosting on the carrot cake.
Also never seen or heard of the tradition, but if I saw a carrot cake grouped with the other Easter desserts I would automatically make the bunny connection.
As a non Christian who went to her share of friends’ celebrations as a child, I’ve always associated Pavlova with Easter. I (unfortunately) did not grow up in Australia, so I have no idea why I encountered so much Easter Pavlova in SoCal. Anybody else have that experience?
