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Easter Eggs
The English word Easter comes from the ancient Anglo Saxon name Eostre, the god of spring. In the pagan world, the eggs always symbolized the arrival of spring. The Christian church took the part of spring and bestowed it according to their own way, so that, as time went by the eggs began to symbolize the Resurrection of Christ. When it turned into a religious symbol, the eggs were painted and decorated in a variety of ways and in the XVII and XVIII centuries there were incrusted eggs with jewels as a toy with an egg shape for children.
The custom of making it in a shape of an egg seems to have begun in France in the beginning of the nineteenth century. During that time however, they must have been pretty hard and muddy although they were intricately decorated, since it was not until Joseph Fry perfected the art of adding cocoa butter to the “dough” when fabrication of molded chocolate was made possible. The Fry’s produced the first Easter eggs in England in the year 1873, followed by the Cadburys in 1875; and around 1893, Cadbury offered at least nineteen different styles. These English Easter eggs were influenced by the ones that were produced in France, Holland and Spain, and it was in Germany where the “crocodile” look was created and which is still widely used today. This consists on breaking the smoothness of the surface of the egg, from which you will be able to see small little imperfections on it.
Besides the eggs, at the beginning of the past century people started making a diverse amount of simple figures of molded chocolate.
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