Tomie dePaola wrote wonderful childrens’ books centered around Italian traditions. His characters are identifiable to children through their weaknesses or flaws, and who always end up with some kind of gentle crisis to be managed; but everything always comes out all right in the end. (Something everyone, actually, can identify with, whether it’s your childhood self, your own child, or you, reading aloud to your own children.) In our house we have many of the Strega Nona books. Strega Nona is a benevolent “grandma witch” character who lives in a village in Italy and has many funny adventures with the local inhabitants. Magically- spelled pasta pots boil over in an abundance of macaroni, angels fly into kitchens to cook. All kinds of whimsical and kooky mishaps delight young readers.

In Watch Out For The Chicken Feet In Your Soup, Joey brings his friend Eugene to his grandmother’s house. Though he loves his grandmother, he has some trepidation about what his friend might think about his chicken- feet cooking grandma and her old world ways. His worries are unfounded, however, as grandma wins Eugene over immediately and the two become fast friends. She shows them how to make Easter “bread dolls”, and Joey sees that his grandmother’s “otherness” is the exact thing that wins Eugene’s affection. That and a big bowl of spaghetti.

My own family has its own share of old ladies with great heapings of “otherness”, but I wasn’t bothered by it; as a matter of fact I was proud that I was the only person in school who ate Sunday dinner at 1 in the afternoon; Thanksgiving included turkey, but also escarole soup and ravioli; and that our chicken soup broth was cooked with gizzards and hearts. But that I owe to my parents and grandparents, who taught me to never, ever be ashamed of who I was.

My grandmother Filomena made a similar recipe to “bread dolls”, but ours were made with a cookie dough instead of bread. I’ll share it with you here, and a few other good things to eat at Easter time. These cookies are fun for kids to help with, as mine did.

The kids made two baby doll cookies and an egg in the nest. Then they looked forward to eating them for breakfast the next day.

This is the recipe as it was given to me but I usually halve it with no trouble. If you cut it in half it makes about two cookie sheets worth of the smaller cookies. (Not those shown above.)

These are not overly sweet and can even be eaten for breakfast with tea or coffee.

Note: These cookies will grow in the oven!

4-5 cups of flour
2 sticks butter
1 cup sugar
4 eggs
4 TBS milk
2 tsp vanilla
lemon or orange zest
1 tsp baking powder for every cup of flour
pinch salt
lightly hard- boiled eggs, dyed, if you are making baby doll cookies

Preheat your oven to 350. Mix your butter, sugar and eggs.

Add in milk, vanilla, and zest. I used the zest from a half of a lemon.

This is all the zest I used- from one half of a lemon. I don’t make them too lemony, but you can do as much as you like.

Add baking powder to the flour, the flour to the liquid, and your pinch of salt. Form it into a dough. You will need to add flour as needed. The dough needs to be not sticky- you need to be able to shape it. Sometimes it helps also to form it into a ball and refrigerate it for 30 minutes. This would also be a good time to dye the eggs. I boil the eggs for about 5 minutes so they won’t be too hard to eat after baking.

Flour the area where you are working and form the dough into shapes, like these:

These eggs were boiled for about 5 minutes. That way when they bake they won’t be too cooked to eat.

Unfortunately the time for cooking will vary according to how big you make your cookies. Preheat your oven to 350 and put the cookies on a greased cookie tray.

I cooked the big ones for about 10 minutes but I checked them constantly. You want to let them turn golden on the bottoms and around the edges.

When they come out of the oven, let them cool and brush them with a glaze of 1/2 cup confectioners sugar, a teaspoon of lemon juice and a teaspoon of water or milk. You may need to add liquid so that it’s watery enough to paint on the cookies. Then put the sprinkles on so they’ll stick. I usually do the tiny rainbow nonpareil sprinkles for these, but I didn’t have any in, so I let the kids pick what they wanted.

Next in the Easter theme is an “Easter pie”, but in this case it is a savory pie filled with cheese, ham and rice. There isn’t any book that goes with this, but in keeping with the Italian holiday spirit of an extravagant table, I’ll go crazy and add on a few extras to this entry!

My mother’s family made an Easter pie growing up that was a little bit different than the usual recipes. Often you’ll see a double- crust pie with multiple lunchmeats, in an egg and cheese based filling. This pie has an egg and rice based filling, with ham and cheese, and only a bottom crust.

My mom never made this for us at home but was able to tell me about the one she ate at her house growing up. I made two different versions, and half of the people in my house liked the first version and half liked the second. (I preferred the second.)

Easter Pie (two ways)

You’ll need:

1 cup cooked rice. I think an Italian rice is best if you can get it. I had some Arborio rice in the pantry. Don’t bother cooking it risotto style, but I did add the liquid gradually. However, I did not stand there and stir it carefully like I would for a risotto. If you don’t have Italian rice just a plain white rice would be fine. My last choice would be a jasmine or basmati rice, since they have their own unique flavor, even though I love them in other things.
4-6 eggs
1 cup ricotta cheese
1 cup mixed cheeses like mozzarella, parmesan, and diced up provolone
a few pieces of thick sliced ham, or whatever ham you have around. I had some ham steaks that I cut up
pie crust- I made my own for the first batch but didn’t feel like doing it for the second, so I used a ready- made crust that I had in the freezer
spices to your taste- I used salt, pepper, marjoram, and nutmeg

For the first version, I sauteed the ham in a little butter. I then mixed it with the eggs, rice and grated cheeses, my seasonings, and then added in the ricotta. I didn’t stir the ricotta all the way because I wanted to get some gooey piles of cheese in there, like you’d have on top of a white pizza. I stirred it in a little but made sure I could till see lumps of cheese. I cooked the pie in a 375 oven with some fresh parsley on top.

See the rice in there like little chewy jewels? Everyone liked the texture that it gives. Also, notice that I cut the ham in nice big pieces.

In the second version, I added a little bit of diced onion to the ham in the pan.

This picture came out a bit blurry, but you get the idea.

I added the ham to the eggs and cheeses, but with this one I layered slices of provolone across the top and sprinkled with some parmesan.

I sprinkled nutmeg and pepper across the top of this one.

When this second version cooked it puffed up high and had a nice chewy cheesy crust on top. I preferred this one because it was cheesier and the onion gave it a little flavor. I wouldn’t go too crazy with the onion though.

I served both versions with toasted buttered rolls, and a salad. This salad has a dressing of olive oil, lemon juice, salt and pepper and about a half teaspoon of sugar, and it’s REALLY good. This is usually served as a brunch or a light lunch somet… — I served both versions with toasted buttered rolls, and a salad. This salad has a dressing of olive oil, lemon juice, salt and pepper and about a half teaspoon of sugar, and it’s REALLY good. This is usually served as a brunch or a light lunch sometime during Easter weekend.

Last, no Italian Easter is complete without a cheesecake. This is so easy; the only catch is that you’ll need a spring-form pan. Very few ingredients- ricotta, eggs, sugar and vanilla- make a delicious custardy cheesecake.

Custardy Ricotta Cheesecake

This is a light, eggy cheesecake. It is not at all like a New York- style cheesecake.

You will need 9 or 10 inch springform pan, greased and lined on the bottom with parchment paper.

Preheat your oven to 400.

2 lbs ricotta; I like whole milk
5 eggs
1 1/2 cups sugar
pinch salt
scrapings from half a vanilla bean, or a dash of extract
Beat the ricotta briskly with a spoon to get out any lumps, or put it through a processor or a sieve if you are ambitious. Beat eggs, sugar and vanilla together, then add slowly to the cheese in little bits at a time.
Pour the batter into the prepared pan. Turn the oven down to 350 and bake for about 30 minutes. The sides will pull away from the pan, but the middle will still be jiggly. Turn the oven off and let the cake continue baking for another 10 minutes or so. You’ll see how it will set and then you can open the door and let it cool. Some people like to sprinkle this with cinnamon or serve with berries.

Notice how the sides have pulled away and there are little bubbles.

There are few things I like better than cheesecake. Happy Easter!