Our Holy Week is clearly a sweet holiday. Like every year at this time, pastry shops are filled with recipes for desserts of all kinds. It is perhaps one of the most important dates when it comes to sweets and in theory they are dates of recollection and abstinence but… what the hell! Yes, the best desserts these days are made by the nuns freeze dried candy online.
You can find traditional torrijas and some very original ones (coffee, red wine, stuffed with cream, caramelized…), fried milk , crunchy pestiños with honey, wind buñuelos filled with more than delicious things, Easter cakes , panquemados for breakfast, Galician pancakes or Asturian frixuelos , chocolate eggs … I could go on like this for another paragraph and I’m sure I’d leave something behind.
In this compilation I have collected the list of the most famous sweets and desserts of Holy Week and Easter . All of them contain traditions and stories worth telling and in the blog you know that we like to collect all that information and complete our recipes. I am sure that we will expand them with your contributions, with those sweets from each region of Spain that you recommend to me.
The best Easter desserts and sweets
Traditional milk toast
This original, and at the same time traditional, recipe for the most typical sweet at Easter is a dessert that is based on a slice of bread soaked in milk, coated in egg, fried in extra virgin olive oil and flavored to taste with syrup or, in this case, sugar and cinnamon. It is a very simple and very common dessert for these upcoming dates.
Fritters
In Spain, Easter dessert recipes are some of the best dishes of the entire year. These small balls of fried dough are a delicacy available to everyone, because although it may seem like a difficult recipe, it is not very complicated and does not have to be a seasonal sweet, they are delicious any time of the year.
Easter fritters
These Empordà fritters are a typical Catalan variety that incorporate anise in the recipe, making them a classic during Holy Week. With just flour, milk and egg we will make a delicious and simple recipe that you will love.
Easter Mona
Mona de Pascua is one of the desserts par excellence at the end of Lent and Holy Week. It is a recipe with a great tradition in almost the entire peninsula, but especially in the communities of Murcia, Valencia, Catalonia and Castilla la Mancha. Although in regions such as Galicia and Asturias, there is the roscón or Easter roscón, which is basically the same and very similar to the roscón de reyes.
Easter cuties for kids
A perfect dessert to make with the little ones in the house, these Easter cuties are delicious and very fun. If you want a traditional Easter dessert that is not torrijas, this is perfect for it.
Bones of Saint Expedite
These bones of San Expedito are a typical Easter sweet throughout Spain. Perfect for a snack or breakfast, you will love this dessert for its flavor.
Fried doughnuts
A very typical sweet from Andalusia similar to Galician fried donuts, although I know that they are prepared throughout the year, especially when there is a celebration at home. Along with torrijas and pestiños, we can say that they are part of a triumvirate of skillet desserts. Being so popular, the variations of the same recipe are countless, changing details according to each area or each house.
Panquemao or panquemado
Panquemado is one of the most typical preparations of Valencian lands during Holy Week. Depending on the region in which we are located, it will receive very different names: panou, toña, fogaseta, fogaza, pa socarrat, cóc, tonya. It is a type of Easter roscón or mona de pascua, which is another of the sweets that are traditionally consumed in the region on these dates.
Pestiños with honey
In Lent the streets of Andalusia smell of matalauva, orange blossom and pestiños, that fried dough in which everyone collaborates. Normally the people gather around a basin where the dough is prepared, forming a chain of people to then fry and finish them. It’s not just the result, it’s the entire process and what goes with it.
Malaga drunks
The term “borrachuelo” derives from the wine that the dough contains, which makes the sweet drunk. It is common to see drunks in the windows of all pastry shops already at the beginning of Lent, but the most common thing is to prepare them at home as part of the family festive ritual.
Gañotes of Ubrique
In the Sierra de Grazalema area, in the province of Cádiz, they prepare a very particular sweet during Lent and Holy Week, a type of very aromatic spiral-shaped donuts called Gañotes. The preparation of this sweet is so important and so deeply rooted in customs, that even in Ubrique they have held a gañotes contest for several years now, where attendees can taste and then evaluate those presented.
Cream donuts
There are many variants when it comes to preparing this type of sweet, you will find candil donuts, anise donuts, fried donuts like my mother’s and almost one type for each house in which they are prepared. Which shows that this sweet is a perfect option to let our imagination fly.
Chocolate eggs or Easter eggs
In my country, what is typical, what is in my memory, is that at Easter the godparents give their godchildren a chocolate Easter egg. For me it was a special moment, I waited patiently for them to arrive home with the long-awaited trophy, the bigger the better, to open it without loss of time, put on the chocolate boots and discover the surprise inside.
Fried donuts
These donuts are made by my mother Rosa, and for as long as I can remember, it is a recipe that was made to complete the larpeiro tribute of the Magdalena festivities. They are not the spongy donuts from Candil, nor the pasta type ones they make in Mancha, nor stupid nor clever like in Madrid, they are the ones that enter the body with a good shot of brown liquor.
Hornazos of Jaén
Today we bring you another traditional recipe that is very reminiscent of sweet ochios . These are buns made of extra virgin olive oil dough , flavored with anise grains, which are crowned with an egg and dough in the shape of a cross. Hornazos de Jaén are made and consumed throughout Holy Week throughout the province of Jaén and nearby areas.