Easter bread and Simnel cake, a fruit cake with almond icing, cream caramel candies, lemon cookie egg — it is that time of the year. Confectionaries, cakes and Easter eggs are on the shelves for the weekend and several bakeries reported better sales than in the past few years.
These are not items you can buy off the racks at any other time of the year.
“Kolkata still loves to celebrate Easter the traditional way and people look forward to these things. They know hot cross buns will be available only this week and place orders. Children accompany adults to choose the design on their Easter eggs,” said Lovey Kapur, owner of Kookie Jar.
Easter, like most festivals in the city, is not restricted to a community.
“Here, the footfall is all-inclusive, and not just Christians who come to pick up the goodies,” said Kapur.
Most confectioneries prepare marzipan and nougat Easter eggs, bunnies and lollipops.
Children love to pick up chocolate Easter eggs, break them and eat the candies that pop out of them.
After service in church on Friday, Priyanka Kaur will take her seven-year-old daughter Meher Rachel to Nahoum in New Market to buy hot cross buns.
“There is usually a very long queue but I still insist on taking my daughter because it is a tradition that I want her to know and continue when she grows up,” said Kaur.
Easter eggs come from Saldanha Bakery for the Kaurs.
“In the first three days of the week, at Park Street, we had a sale of about 1 lakh Easter goodies and we expect the sale to go up during the weekend,” said Chiranjib Maity, manager, operations, Flurys.
Kookie Jar had started sending off Easter goodies to its various stores from last weekend.
The celebratory mood had set in earlier this year with Holi on Monday, said Kapur.
Nahoum put up its Easter fare 10 days ago and the demand has gone up in the past two or three days, an employee at the store said.
“Apart from the familiar faces, we are also seeing many newcomers at the store,” said Debra Alexander, owner, Saldanha Bakery.
“There have been lots of inquiries and the sale so far is 20 per cent more than last year. We are hoping it will go up,” said Alexander.
But it’s not just the big brands or old outlets that are doing brisk business. Many make Easter eggs at home that they sell and there are also the smaller non-descript bakeries with their loyal clientele.
Shelley Joseph, a resident of Picnic Garden, sent out her Easter menu over WhatsApp last month and finished sending out her last orders on Thursday evening.
“Over this one month, I made about 50,000 eggs, bunnies and lollipops. It was at least 20,000 more than last year,” she said.