Last night Gary and I went to the evening Maundy Thursday service, and today is Good Friday. I’ve
been thinking about Good Fridays past, and how I used to spend them. As a working mom I would generally take the day off. The children, once they were school age, would have the day off as well. Sometimes there would be a church service, sometimes if the weather was sunny and warm we'd do something outside. But especially, on Good Friday I did Easter baking.
Holiday baking was something Mom practiced in a big way. She inherited this from her mother, my Grandma Wolinski, and passed it on to me and my sisters and brothers. My siblings and I have likewise passed on this activity to our sons and daughters. And my ten year old grandson bakes as well.
Mom would start her baking early in Holy Week. She did homemade bread, from a recipe from her mother. She did sugar cookies, dozens of sugar cookies, cut out with Easter-themed cooky cutters and frosted in pink, yellow, green. She baked a delicious sweet yeast bread, shaped in pieces about 3
or 4 inches long, and dipped in melted butter, sugar and cinnamon, called “Russian Bread.” My recollection is that Mom got this recipe from a friend when they were both young mothers. It became a must at every Easter and Christmas from then on. And most wonderfully, Mom made an Easter Lamb cake every Easter. Actually, she made several, sometimes 3, sometimes more. One would be kept for
the family, the others given to friends, neighbors, the sisters who taught in the parochial school.
been thinking about Good Fridays past, and how I used to spend them. As a working mom I would generally take the day off. The children, once they were school age, would have the day off as well. Sometimes there would be a church service, sometimes if the weather was sunny and warm we'd do something outside. But especially, on Good Friday I did Easter baking.
Holiday baking was something Mom practiced in a big way. She inherited this from her mother, my Grandma Wolinski, and passed it on to me and my sisters and brothers. My siblings and I have likewise passed on this activity to our sons and daughters. And my ten year old grandson bakes as well.
Mom would start her baking early in Holy Week. She did homemade bread, from a recipe from her mother. She did sugar cookies, dozens of sugar cookies, cut out with Easter-themed cooky cutters and frosted in pink, yellow, green. She baked a delicious sweet yeast bread, shaped in pieces about 3
or 4 inches long, and dipped in melted butter, sugar and cinnamon, called “Russian Bread.” My recollection is that Mom got this recipe from a friend when they were both young mothers. It became a must at every Easter and Christmas from then on. And most wonderfully, Mom made an Easter Lamb cake every Easter. Actually, she made several, sometimes 3, sometimes more. One would be kept for
the family, the others given to friends, neighbors, the sisters who taught in the parochial school.
As I remember it, in the very early 50s Mom didn’t actually make her own Lamb cake. Instead, Grandma Wolinski would send us one that she had baked, via Railway Express. It would come along with an Easter box for each of the children, a cardboard box covered in wallpaper, holding some Easter treats in shredded Easter grass, and covered with brightly colored cellophane.
I’m not sure exactly when Mom started making her own Easter Lamb, but not very many years went by before she did. She started with a handwritten recipe that Grandma sent her, written in the blue ink that Grandma used. And just as later happened with me, my sisters, my children, my nieces, the Easter Lamb quickly became Mom’s own. The recipe is a very heavy pound cake, and the cake is baked in a lamb-shaped metal mold. The rich, heavy cake, when baked, can stand on its own. Once cooled, it is frosted in a heavy buttercream frosting, with raisins used to delineate the eyes and mouth. Grandma, and Mom, would put a red ribbon around the neck, as a reminder of the Paschal Lamb represented by the cake. They used an old-fashioned aluminum icing gun to
decorate their Easter Lambs, laboriously squeezing out row after row of buttercream frosting to resemble fleece. I did this too when I started making Easter Lambs for my family, in the early 70s. It was hard work, and led to aching fingers. Somewhere along the line I decided to try frosting the cake and patting on coconut to make the fleece effect. But so far as I know, my sisters, daughter, and nieces still do the frosting the traditional way.
decorate their Easter Lambs, laboriously squeezing out row after row of buttercream frosting to resemble fleece. I did this too when I started making Easter Lambs for my family, in the early 70s. It was hard work, and led to aching fingers. Somewhere along the line I decided to try frosting the cake and patting on coconut to make the fleece effect. But so far as I know, my sisters, daughter, and nieces still do the frosting the traditional way.
So, every Good Friday, for almost four decades, I did Easter baking on Good Friday. I made Easter Lambs, I made Russian Bread, I made cutout sugar cookies. I made a pinwheel cinnamon roll using a biscuit dough recipe, derived from my copy of a 1954 cookbook, “The Betty Furness Westinghouse Cook Book” (Julia Kiene). Mom’s copy of this book was her “yellow cookbook,” and especially in the 50s and early 60s it was her key cookbook. I acquired my copy when I was first married, and it served as my main cookbook as well for many years.
At some point I also started making Hot Cross Buns and an Easter Nest coffee cake, both recipes from a 1973 cookbook, “Better Homes and Gardens Homemade Bread Cook Book.”
At some point I also started making Hot Cross Buns and an Easter Nest coffee cake, both recipes from a 1973 cookbook, “Better Homes and Gardens Homemade Bread Cook Book.”
The two pictures below date to around 1990, I think. An Easter Brunch for family and friends at our former ranch house in Charlottesville. On the sidetable, clockwise, 1) Easter Lamb, 2) Russian Bread, 3) cupcakes made from a second batch of the Lamb Cake, 4) Pinwheels, 5) more cupcakes, 6) Easter Nest cake. (Either Mom or my mother-in-law would have taken the pictures. And I wish I still had those blue flowered slacks.)
This year Mary and Jessie will be bringing a gluten free Easter Lamb, and gluten free Russian Bread, to the Easter brunch that Gary and I will be hosting. And my daughter Lara will be bringing an original recipe version of the Easter Lamb. I know other sisters, nieces, cousins, maybe a son, daughter in law, and grandson, will also be doing the Easter Lamb.
Here is the Easter Lamb that Lara made last year at her place:
Here is the Easter Lamb that Lara made last year at her place:
In 1972, the year after Grandma Wolinski died, Mom compiled recipes, poems and sayings, even a doll pattern, into a red spiral
notebook, and made copies for her sisters (my aunts) and her children. The recipes were ones that Grandma had written out and mailed to Mom when she was a young mother. The Easter Lamb recipe was one of those included in the notebook collection. My copy of that recipe, the one for Russian Bread, and a shorthand version I wrote out for Mom’s sugar cookies, are frail, frayed and spotted with the accumulated splatters of decades, roadmaps of my Easter baking of years gone by.
notebook, and made copies for her sisters (my aunts) and her children. The recipes were ones that Grandma had written out and mailed to Mom when she was a young mother. The Easter Lamb recipe was one of those included in the notebook collection. My copy of that recipe, the one for Russian Bread, and a shorthand version I wrote out for Mom’s sugar cookies, are frail, frayed and spotted with the accumulated splatters of decades, roadmaps of my Easter baking of years gone by.