The Easter Basket of special foods (described below) is arranged on Holy Saturday and taken to church, where a special blessing ceremony with prayers and sprinkling with Holy Water, is performed by the parish priest. The blessed food is served on Easter Sunday Brunch, once the fast is broken after the morning Easter Liturgy.
As you already know from my previous post, that Ukrainians follow an Easter tradition of blessing an Easter Basket full of special foods, which is covered with a special embroidered scarf.
These scarfs are hand embroidered by family members, and used only for the purpose of covering the Easter Baskets.
I already have several different Paska/Babka recipes that I tried and loved. Still, this one sparked my interest because it only requires 4 cups of flour to make two medium-sized Paska, hence perfect for a smaller family.
These Ukrainian Easter Eggs were decorated by my Great-Aunt Anna Kril Bart (Bartoszewska) and her children, in Queens, New York, over 80 years ago. The “sticks” displayed in front of the platter, are homemade styluses, used for drawing the outlines for the design on these eggs. The stylus handles were made from tree twigs, and the metal funnels were made from a metal can cut out…..such was life even in New York, USA, many years ago.
The whole process of decorating a pysanka, consists of twelve basic steps listed in this post. I have chosen a very basic egg design for the first egg, and if you purchased an egg decorating kit, you will find several other designs to choose from for your next projects.