Cascarones

It's almost Easter time & cascarones are on my mind! If you've never had the cascarone experience, man have you missed out!

Cascarones are a Mexican and increasingly popular Southwestern tradition involving hollowed out eggs filled with confetti. (Some of the eggs are filled with flour sometimes, too... read on to find out 'why'). You can decorate the eggs or leave them plain. They are given out in Easter baskets and eventually the cascarone fight breaks out, with the eggs being smashed on heads, backs, and thrown at anyone within range!

Supposedly, when Maxmillian and Carlotta came from France to rule Mexico in the 1860s, Carlotta brought her perfumed talc in the empty egg shells - a custom that was picked up on their Eastern/Asian travels. That's why in some parts of Mexico and the Southwest the cascarones are filled with flour instead of confetti (or in addition to eggs with confetti, too).

Our family tends to put flour in the cascarones instead... it makes for such a funner fight and the look afterwards is priceless! (I'll have to try to dig out some old photos of us with flour in our hair.) I remember one year, my uncle got out the water hose during the cascarone fight. It was interesting, to say the least, trying to get clumps of dough out of our hair, our clothes, and the grass!

Make some cascarones with your family this year. Really, they are lots of fun (confetti and flour) and fun to make. They also look really nice as decorations on a tablescape, in a basket or bowl on a mantle, etc.

A few weeks (some folks start a few months) before Easter, start saving your eggs. Anytime you cook with an egg, instead of cracking it open, poke a small hole in the bottom and let the egg drip out. Wash the shell out thoroughly and let it completely dry.

Once it's time to decorate, you can paint them solid colors or with designs, write on them with Sharpies, decorate with some glue and glitter, or leave a few natural ones. Brown eggs look great this way!

As for closing them up, there are a few options. Most folks glue a small piece of colorful tissue paper over the open end. Nothing fancy, and nothing real durable because you want the contents to easily spill out when the timing is right.

Some people use tape (as I did in a bind one year) but it's easy to come off and looks tacky. If you are really anal about it, you can melt some wax to cover it ot use some type of putty or such. Tissue paper is traditional though. And it's easiest if you get a little glue stick/dabber type of thing and just dab a few spots of glue around the base of it and stick the tissue on it gently, so it doesn't get too moist and get all gloppy and gloopy... technical terms there.

Put some in any Easter baskets you are giving out. Whenever it's time for the fight, make sure everyone has some sort of basket or bowl to carry their ammo in, LOL.

It's said to be considered good luck if you have a cascarone broken over your head. I don't know about that, but the Easter I was pregnant with Javi, I had several broken over my head and on my belly... and the good Lord saved my "miracle baby" and he's here today! (Did you know I came very close to losing Javi? Wow... I've not thought about that in a long time... another long post for one of these days!)

If you decide to make some this year, please take pictures and share them with me! I'll be sure to post some up here once we've had our Easter celebration. And please feel free to share any Easter traditions you and your family may have. I'm a huge fan of traditions - keeping old ones and creating new ones. God Bless & have a beautiful Easter! <3