Easter hot-cross buns
Easter at Real Foods
You can find our full Easter shop online.
You can buy everything you might need for some Easter baking, including Extracts and Essences and a wide range of Gluten Free baking options. There are also great ready-made options including nut roasts and stuffing.
One of the bigger sellers at this time of year is always the Hot Cross Bun. They are normally available in our 2 Edinburgh stores, but we can't send them out with our webshop as they're freshly baked and wouldn't arrive at their best. Please enquire instore about availability as this varies from year to year.
If you're looking for inspiration of what to cook, try our recipes section for a great range of tried and tested recipes. For example, there's a great recipe for a vegan take on Hot Cross Buns. Or try making a Simnel cake for Easter lunch or as a treat on Mothering Sunday.
A lovely easter treat
Easter Treats
We have bunnies, easter eggs and a fabulous range of chocolate to suit every taste. If you're looking for a specific type (e.g. organic or vegan). Simply filter the products on the left-hand side of the shop. You can also filter by brand and department to help you find exactly what you want.
Easter eggs always sell out early, to avoid disappointment get your orders in as early as possible.
We have eggs from the ever popular Montezuma range, organic luxury chocolates that are handmade by a small family firm in West Sussex. Truly delicious, there's a dark chocolate eco-egg using minimal packaging (or try this milk chocolate and orange one), or buy one of their novelty cheeky bunnies in white, milk or dark chocolate.
Montezuma also have delicious hen sized eggs available here.
Moo Free have a range of Dairy Free Easter Eggs, including a truly delicious Organic and Vegan Alternative to Honeycomb egg. They've combined their award winning free-from chocolate and combined it with vegan friendly honeycomb.
Divine's Fairtrade range is always popular, or try an easter egg hunt with Plamil's mini eggs.
For true adult decadence, take a look at the Booja Booja range. Organic, vegan and utterly delicious truffle eggs in hand-painted, handmade trinket egg boxes made by Kashmiri artisans. The income goes to making the artisans' lives more stable and sustainable, whilst you get a truly beautiful gift to treasure all year. Well, you could give them away, but it'll be difficult to part with them, we warn you now!
D & D Chocolates have also brought out their Dairy Free, Gluten Free and certified Nut-Free treats, so everyone can enjoy something this Easter. Try their bunnies.
Booja Booja organic large midnight espresso truffle egg
How long have we been giving eggs at Easter?
In the UK and Europe, the earliest Easter eggs were painted and decorated hen, duck or goose eggs, a practice still carried on in many parts of the world today.
As time went by, artificial eggs were made and by the end of the 17th century, manufactured eggs made of various materials were available for purchase at Easter, for giving as Easter gifts and presents.
The first chocolate Easter eggs appeared in Germany and France in around the 1800s and soon spread to the rest of Europe and beyond.
The first chocolate eggs were solid and they were soon followed by hollow eggs. Making hollow eggs at that time was no mean feat, because the easily worked chocolate we use today didn't exist then, they had to use a crude paste made from ground roasted Cacao beans.
By the turn of the 19th Century, the discovery of the modern chocolate making process and improved mass manufacturing methods meant that the hollow, moulded Chocolate Easter Egg was fast becoming the Easter gift of choice in the UK and many parts of Europe, and by the 1960's it was well established worldwide.
Spring equinox
Why does Easter move around the calendar?
The date that Easter falls on every year is governed by a fairly complex calculation related to the Spring Equinox.
The formula is: The first Sunday after the first full moon following the Spring Equinox is Easter Sunday or Easter Day.
This formula was set by Egyptian astronomers in Alexandria in 235ad, and was calculated using the same method as the Jews have traditionally used to calculate the feast of the Passover, which occurred at about the same time as the death of Christ.
Christian Easter came to represent the 'resurrection' or re-birth of Christ after the crucifixion. Here the depiction of The Resurrection of Jesus Christ, by Piero della Francesca.
How did eggs become linked to Easter?
When the Saxons came to Britain in about the 5th century AD, the spring festival Eostre came with them, along with re-birth and fertility rituals involving eggs, chicks and rabbits.
The Saxons converted to Christianity and started to celebrate the death and the resurrection of Christ which coincided with Eostre, so that's what the early church in Britain called the celebration, Eostre or Easter in modern English.
The egg, representing fertility and re-birth in pagan times, was also adopted as part of the Christian Easter festival and it came to represent the 'resurrection' or re-birth of Christ after the crucifixion. Some Christians believe it is a symbol of the stone blocking the Sepulchre, or tomb, being 'rolled' away.