Mona de Pascua

[xchic]

Originally Posted by poli

I have never heard of this pastry, but a wiki seach revealed that the Spanish mona comes from the arab munna which means provisions for the mouth (victuals). I always find regional foods on holy week to be interesting subject matter.

I found that too, and I thought it was interesting - but didn't really explain the reason for eating it.

Originally Posted by irmamar

Mona is typical from Catalonian speaker places (Catalonia, Valencia and Baleares). Here it's eaten on Monday (Lunes de Pascua). People go to the country and eat "carne a la brasa" and "mona". My husband's grandmother told me that years ago the godfather/godmother (padrino/madrina de bautizo) used to give a mona tor his/her godchild, but it consisted in a kind of bread with boiled eggs (as much eggs as the child's age), until his/her First Communion.

But the monas made here are a bit different from yours. Here this is a round cake, with "yema tostada" on it (and inside it or, sometimes, with jam) and decorated with a figure of chocolate. Something like this (not exactly):

Yours look more exciting than ours in the Valencia region! Ours are very like the picture I posted, & actually quite bread-like. I think the chocolate egg is a fairly recent thing. I vaguely remember that they had hard-boiled eggs in them when we first came here

They are supposed to be eaten on Monday here as well - but they have them on the last day of school too.