roll on Sunday..........

Being the pagan that I am, the best thing about Easter for me is all the chocolate.....

Plus of course the fact that Spring is here and all the gorgeous bulbs are flowering.

The Easter Bunny was first mentioned in Georg Franck von Frankenau's De ovis paschalibus(About the Easter Egg) referring to an Alsace tradition of an Easter Hare bringing Easter Eggs (and the negative impact of too much egg consumption !!!!!!!!!)

Bringing Easter eggs seems to have its origins in Alsace and the Upper Rhineland, both then in the Holy Roman Empire, and southwestern Germany, where the practice was first recorded in a German publication in the 1500s (early 16th century). The first edible Easter Eggs were made in Germany during the early 19th century and were made of pastry and sugar.

Dyed eggs were shared and eaten at spring festivals in ancient Egypt, Greece, Rome, Persia and China. Gradually these traditions made their way westward and were expressed in various forms – from dyed goose eggs to beautifully decorated paper mâché eggs in the 17th and 18th centuries. In the late 19th and early 20th century the ultimate Easter eggs – the Fabergé eggs made their royal appearance.

Do chocolate eggs come
from chocolate chickens?

Today’s European tradition of giving chocolate Easter eggs as gifts can be traced back to 19th century France and Germany. The first eggs were small and solid and made of a course, bitter dark chocolate. As technology improved and cocoa became more widely available, so did chocolate Easter eggs.

The first mass-produced chocolate egg appeared in England in 1873 when Cadbury debuted their first Easter egg. It wasn’t until the early 1900s that milk chocolate Easter eggs became available.

***** Five-stone, 168,540-calorie, Easter egg  *****

********** and the BIGGEST one in the world **********