We both grew up with the American tradition of Easter baskets—baskets with cellophane “grass” that were filled—ostensibly, by the Easter bunny—with candy. Easter after church was always the time for kids to spoil their appetites by gorging on jelly beans, chocolate eggs, and marshmallow peeps. (For our European readers, “peeps” are small yellow chicks made of marshmallow.) Here in Valencia, the tradition is a little different. The mona de Pascua is a baked Easter sweet bread with a decorated hard-boiled egg on top. Some sources call it a cake, but the texture is very much like a sweet brioche. In recent years, the hard-boiled egg has been widely replaced by a Kinder chocolate egg, and many bakeries (like the one at the bottom of this...Read More