Reader, Adriene Bellmyer, wrote all about cascarones for us this week. They are part of her family's Easter tradition and it turns out my family has been making cascarones without the fun part at the end for years! We are going to do the fun part this year and my kids are very excited.
"I’ll be honest, I didn’t know what I was getting myself into when I spent Easter with my future in-laws. We all got handed a carton of hollowed out and dyed eggshells, headed outside and everyone started smashing these eggshells on each others heads. It took me a few minutes to comprehend what I was seeing, everyone was laughing and running around chasing each other all over the yard. It looked like so much fun, so I finally joined in and from then on I was hooked.
We got married and started our own family but we have kept the Cascarones as our family tradition even during the years spent with my side of the family. Every year at the start of Lent I start preparing the eggs. It takes a bit of work and it’s not a pretty sight but it’s worth it.
- First you have to hollow out the eggs, I usually take advantage of baking or breakfast when several eggs will be eaten at once. Start by poking a tiny hole on one end and on the opposite end you want to make a little bit bigger hole and using a toothpick poke into the tiny hole just to unblock the airflow.
- Then you can either blow the egg out by blowing air into the tiny hole, or you can just start shaking the egg and wait for it to fall out which takes a bit more patience. I typically choose the first option.
- Wash out the shells using hot water and a little bit of dish soap because you want to make sure they don’t start to smell, yuck! Set them on a towel or paper towel, large hole side down, to drain the water. Once dried put them into an empty egg carton until you have all of your eggs ready to be dyed.
My husband and I have 8 children and that is just our immediate family, if we host Easter I make sure every guest has a dozen as well, that’s a lot of eggs! The whole family looks forward to sitting around the table, typically on a weekend, and we then dye our eggs. Some people fill cascarones with confetti but this is a lot of extra work and by keeping them empty, the eggs are more environmentally friendly. Bigger kids help little kids, my husband and I usually take care of helping the toddlers or take turns cleaning up the spills that WILL happen but it is so much fun preparing the cascarones. It is also an activity that brings us together as a family and the kids love making special eggs for certain peoples heads.
When it’s time to actually “do the eggs” (as my kids like to call it) we all head outdoors, for easier clean up, and get crackin’. We do have a couple of rules like go easy on any elderly participants and for younger kiddos (toddlers) we crack the eggs in our hands and sprinkle on their heads.
I have been a part of this long standing tradition for 21 years and it just fills everyone with laughter, fun, entertainment, some curious neighbors and lots of eggshell bits in our hair."
Thank you to Adriene for writing this! I have seen pictures of her doing this over the years and I'm excited to add this to our Easter to add some laughter.
