this is from Old Town square in Prague

you can dream that one day you’ll be able to paint eggs like that – it takes some mad skills and patience

Czech Easter: How to make Easter eggs

The egg (Czech: vajíčko or vejce) is an essential part of Easter and a symbol of new life. Painting eggs is a folk tradition and there are many ways how to do it. 

Step one: blow out the egg or as we say “vyfouknout”

The best would be if you just watched this video. 

Holes are on both sides.

But you don’t have to do this for all eggs. Some techniques are perfectly fine with regular boiled eggs. For example:

OVO

You simply buy some OVO motives at the mall and follow this picture (water has to be hot!). Easy and fast – good for kids because they can make it by themselves. 

This is starting to look like some commercial for OVO but they make another set like this one. Again, pretty easy to apply.

But for this you’ll need to paint the eggs first. You can buy the colours at the drug store or make them at home (red from wine, pink from beet…)

Put the eggs into a pot with water and the paint and boil them for some time (ie. time that is written on the rear of the package). Again, very easy. 

…or you can use oil paints

Scraped eggs are done by scrapping. Surprisingly. This method takes a lot of time and the best instrument for that is a cutter. But you can use just as well any kind of knife, small scissors or nail file. Only the results might be a little different…

My favourite way of painting eggs is using onion peels. Wrap them tightly in nylons (or bandages), together with various types of grass or any type of nice plant you come by.

 

Now, when all your eggs look like they are going to rob the bank, put them into the pot with onion peels (use a lot of them, eggs will have darker colour) and boil them for some time. 

Wax painting – another method thanks to which are made some wonderful egg designs. You need to warm up the wax and then with sharpened wooden skewer (or previously mentioned tools) you carefully paint ornaments on the egg.

The results are in many cases pretty amazing but sadly my eggs never looked like that.

There are of course many more ways how to decorate eggs but I included only those that are by my opinion the most common (and those I myself know how to do). 

But the human imagination has no limits, so here you have a few more examples

This method is called “drátování” (wiring).

Veselé Velikonoce! 

judases with sugar

mazanec

judases = jidáše

mazanec (well, this one looks more like pletenec) with raisins

sugared mazanec with almonds

beránek

beránci with coating

just removed from the mold

this one reminds me of my dog…

Czech cuisine: Easter dishes 

more info on image’s captions

Jidáše (judases) are made from sourdough bread sweetened with honey. Rolled out strands are reminders of Judas’s betrayal and his subsequent death on the rope. Nowadays they are pretty rare and it’s not easy to find them in bakeries. 

Mazanec is a popular Easter cake from sweet sourdough with added raisins or almonds. It is one of the oldest Czech ceremonial pastries and families traditionally brought it on Saturday to the church to let it be consecrated. Some people even make mazanec for Christmas (or more precisely its variant called vánočka).

Beránek (lamb) is a kind of sweet baked food in the shape of lying lamb. In the sweet dough we can find raisins or pieces of jelly. In some cases the lamb is poured over with chocolate or any other sweet coating. People in the Czech lands used to eat real lamb during Easter (because in the Bible is roasted lamb listed as a ceremonial meal before deparature of the Jews from Egypt), but sheep breeding decreased over years around here so lamb baked from dough became tasty substitute for this custom.

Easter Sunday and Easter Monday (dates vary every year)

Czech Easter (Velikonoce) in 2013 = Saturday 30. 3. – Monday 1. 4. 

Easter is the most important Christian holiday, celebrating the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Jesus was crucified on the cross on Good Friday and came back to life on Easter Sunday. In the Czech Republic Easter is mixture of Christian and pagan traditions. On the morning of Eastern Monday, boys and men whip girls and women on their bottoms with a willow stick to make sure they stay healthy for the rest of the year. As a reward girls treat them with hand painted eggs. The egg is a symbol of fertility and new life.

Easter eggs

Reality: Kids get a lot of chocolate sweets and adult men are often instead of eggs treated with a shot of alcohol, so they may get very weary in the middle of the day if they visit a few female friends.

“Šlehání” doesn’t always go this peacefully and girls can get their revenge in afternoon by pouring water on the heads of men