Bakeries expect to sell 700,000 traditional Easter cakes

Perhaps the star of the Easter period in Catalonia is the ‘Mona de Pasqua’, an Easter cake traditionally gifted to children by their godparents. The ‘Mona de Pasqua’ is a decorated sponge cake usually topped with chocolate and figures –often cartoon characters or football stars– that is traditionally eaten on Easter Monday.

For days now, pastry chefs have been working at full capacity in the workshops to be able to show off their finest artistic work. This year, bakeries expect to sell around 700,000 of the delicious treats as they look to move beyond the two-year pandemic slump. This year, no restrictions will be in place which had an impact on the number of cakes sold in 2020 and 2021. 

The Barcelona Pastry Guild is optimistic about the sale of Easter cakes and expects to reach pre-pandemic figures across Catalonia. This year, with no restrictions on family reunions, they have also recovered the average size of the cakes, which were made smaller in past years due to the expectation that fewer people would be meeting up. Now, the normal size, suitable for ten people, will be brought back. 

Every year, a variety of different topical themes take center stage. This year, Alexia Putellas’s Ballon d’Or is one of the most popular new cakes available in bakeries. 

The Barça Femení star’s success has proved massively popular in the Easter cakes as well as in the stands of the Camp Nou, so much so that according to Elies Miró from the Barcelona Pastry Guild, she has managed to dethrone an annual classic, that of Lionel Messi, who is no longer with FC Barcelona. "We are happy because we have changed to another Barça legend and she is a woman," Miró said.

Other popular themes include superhero characters such as Spiderman, fictional characters such as Harry Potter and the Star Wars saga, and Internet phenomena such as Baby Shark and the video game Fortnite, among others. 

Rising prices

Inflation and increases in the price of energy and raw materials will make ‘Mones de Pasqua’ around 5% more expensive this year. 

The guild decided that they could not raise prices much more than this limit, so as to reach as many families as possible despite the fact that some raw materials such as eggs now cost double the price of last year. 

Solidarity with Ukrainians

The pastry industry also wanted to add their weight to the wave of solidarity being shown from Catalonia toward Ukrainian refugees. 

The pasty guilds of Barcelona, Lleida, and Girona, have promoted the ‘Mona per la Pau’ campaign – ‘Cake for peace’. The campaign is a collaboration with chef José Andrés and his World Central Kitchen Foundation to help Ukrainian refugees. "We thought that if we did it all together, we would go further and what we could do would be bigger," Miró explained to the Catalan News Agency. 

Each pastry chef who joins the campaign will donate €1 for each cake sold. Participating establishments will have a campaign poster and stickers and will donate directly to the foundation.

World Central Kitchen has been working for weeks on the Ukrainian-Polish border and in less than a month has served up to a million dishes at 330 different distribution points both inside the country and in the border areas.