Catholic Recipe: Italian Easter Baskets

This is a traditional Italian sweet bread shaped in baskets to surround Easter eggs. Makes a lovely presentation. Bake on the same day you dye your Easter eggs.

DIRECTIONS

Mix 4 cups flour, baking powder, and sugar. Cut butter in with dough hook. Make a well in the dough and add 6 eggs, beat, add flour into well. Mix until all dough comes away from the sides of the bowl.

Take balls of dough and roll back and forth with fingers and palm of hand until a rope approximately 3/4 of inch in diameter is created. Place a raw (colored or uncolored) egg on cookie sheet, place center of rope behind upright egg, cross dough in front of egg and continue to braid until braid is at least 4 inches long. Take the ends and curve them outward. Cut off left over dough. Make two narrow ropes that extend from one side of the egg over the top to the other side, place so that they attach to the base in four equidistant parts of the base. This is to stabilize the egg. Cook at 350 degrees until the top is brown.

Mix the powdered sugar, milk and vanilla. While the Easter baskets are still warm brush tops with glaze and then sprinkle the tops with pastel sprinkles. (from the Joseph Lalli family)