Mona de Pascua (Spanish Easter Cake)

Sweet, soft, and delicious, the mona de Pascua, or Spanish Easter cake, is a traditional Easter dessert often eaten outside with family and friends during Easter week in Spain.

What is the mona de Pascua?

Mona de Pascua is a traditional sweet bread cake made in Spain, especially in Catalonia, Valencia, Murcia, and the Balearic Islands. Godparents traditionally gave the cake to children on Easter Sunday, but nowadays it’s common to receive them from grandparents, and/or family friends who enjoy baking during the Semana Santa.

The mona is made from a sweet yeast bread dough like challah or brioche. It is formed into various shapes and is normally adorned with an egg of some sort. More traditional monas are adorned with a hard-boiled egg and sugar. Modern monas either use hard-boiled eggs that have been colored or chocolate eggs and are often covered with sprinkles. 

I’ve read that the name likely comes from “muna” in ancient Arabic, meaning gift or desire, but I haven’t been able to validate that claim. 

Traditions

Here in my area of the Valencian Community, it’s common to get outside to the beach, a meadow, or the mountainside to eat the mona with friends and/or family. My mother-in-law’s neighbor likes to make my son monas every year. She makes them for her grandchildren and the other kids of the barrio. 

At my son’s school, they tell the kids to come back after spring/Easter break with monas. They get together outside, play in the patio, and eat the monas together.

One year, when my son was little, I got this picture of my son eating one of the monas on the beach. We had gotten together with my husband’s cousins and their kids and played for a while on Easter afternoon.

My mother-in-law told me about how when she was young, the women would wake up early on the day they were going to make their monas. It would take hours to get the bread to rise. To complicate matters more, houses didn’t have their own ovens. So, the women would go to the local large fire ovens to bake their bread. Modern flours, yeasts, and ovens allow for a much easier process.   

Ingredients

The dough for the mona is quite sticky and is best made with a higher gluten content wheat flour. Here in Spain, it’s called “harina de fuerza”. The higher gluten content allows for a more elastic dough that holds its shape well. It also helps the dough hold the formed gas better than regular flour, allowing the bread to rise well. Most people here in Spain use fresh blocks of yeast to get their bread to rise, but you can also use active dried yeast.

The characteristic citrus flavor comes from either orange blossom water, citrus zest, or both. I like to use a combination of lemon and orange zest along with a bit of citrus blossom extract that I make myself.

While the dough is generally made with vegetable oil, most commonly sunflower oil here in Spain, you can also make it with melted butter like a brioche. (This year, I made mine with butter.) Those who are avoiding dairy can also use water rather than milk.

Other ingredients include sugar, salt, and eggs. The sugar and eggs are used both in the dough itself and for decorating the bread. Chocolate eggs can be used in place of hard-boiled eggs when decorating the monas.

Making the monas

Making a mona is much like making other sweetbreads. While the process isn’t difficult, it will take several hours to complete the various rises, so it’s best to begin working early in the day to make sure you have enough time to calmly finish your bread.

(When I made them this year, I started in the afternoon and had dinner plans, so I ended up needing to bake them earlier than I would have liked. While the bread turned out delicious anyway, I would have liked to see some of them rise a bit more!)

Precook the egg

If you are going to make traditional monas with hard-boiled eggs, consider pre-cooking the eggs. While some people allow the egg to cook completely in the oven, most people prefer to pre-boil the egg for a few minutes before baking. This helps ensure that the egg is fully cooked. 

Place the eggs in a pan of water and bring to a boil. Boil the eggs for around 3-4 minutes before removing them from the water. 

Make the yeast starter

First, we’ll prep the yeast by mixing it with some flour, sugar, and lukewarm milk. Once everything is well mixed, cover the mixture and leave it undisturbed in a warm place until gas bubbles form and it doubles in size. It should take around 30 minutes to an hour. 

Make the Dough

After around 15-20 minutes, you can begin to work on the rest of the dough. Combine the dry ingredients: the lemon and orange zest, flour, sugar, and salt. When zesting the orange and lemon, try to use only the outer colored part of the zest. The white pith is bitter. 

Then, combine the wet ingredients. This includes the egg, the milk, and the melted butter or oil as well as the orange blossom water if you’re using it.

Finally, combine the wet ingredients with the dry ingredients. This is a sticky dough, but it will come together and be much easier to work with once you work it for a little while. I like to use one hand to mix and manipulate the dough right in the bowl. This prevents me from having both hands covered in sticky dough. 

After several minutes of working the dough, you’ll notice that it’s much easier to incorporate anything sticking to the sides of the bowl. Continue to play with the dough for a couple more minutes. Then, add the risen yeast starter to the dough and mix it to incorporate it. 

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The first rise

After incorporating the yeast starter completely and working the dough for several minutes, place the dough in a pre-oiled bowl that is large enough to allow the dough to rise. Cover the bowl with a cloth or a beeswax cover and place it in a warm place, leaving it undisturbed so that it can rise.

The amount of time that it takes to rise will depend greatly on the temperature of your environment. In cooler environments, it can take several hours to rise adequately. In warmer temperatures, the process will complete much more quickly.

Once the dough has risen, you can uncover the bowl and punch it down to allow the formed gas to escape.

It’s now time to knead the dough for several minutes.

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Forming the monas

Sprinkle some flour onto a clean kitchen surface and knead the dough. It will be sticky, but try to resist the temptation of adding a lot of flour to it. Use as little as possible. You can use a spatula or knife to scrape off any dough that has stuck to the counter. 

Knead the dough for several minutes until it becomes elastic and less sticky. For regular-sized individual monas, cut the dough into 4 equal-sized portions. 

The traditional mona with egg

To form a traditional mona, break off a small amount of dough from one of the portions. This will be used to make a snake of dough that will hold the egg in place. 

Form the dough into a ball and place it on a baking tray that has been lined with parchment paper. Press into the center of the ball to leave a depression for the egg. Place either a partially hard-boiled egg or a wrapped chocolate egg in the depression.

Roll the extra piece of dough into a long snake-shaped piece and cut it in half to form two pieces. Crisscross the dough snakes over the egg making sure to touch the dough ball on either side to hold the egg in place. 

Once it rises, you can add an egg wash, sugar, and, optionally, sprinkles.

The crocodile

To make a crocodile-shaped mona, break off a small amount of dough for the four legs. Roll the rest of the dough into a long cone shape. (The point of the cone will be the tail of the crocodile.)

Most people like to curve the tail slightly. 

Using kitchen scissors, make a horizontal cut into the opposite side of the dough to form the crocodile’s mouth. This is where we will be placing the egg in the crocodile mona. 

Press on either side of the center of the dough and make a cut in the center to begin to form the legs of the crocodile. Divide the separated dough piece into 4 small pieces, and add one to each leg of the crocodile to increase its size.

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Make cuts along the back of the crocodile with kitchen scissors. This gives the illusion of reptile scales. 

Finish off the crocodile with chocolate chip eyes!

Pan quemado

While it uses the same basic recipe as the mona, instead of being formed into various shapes and holding an egg of some sort, the pan quemado is generally served as a larger round bread. Pan quemado literally means burnt bread. Its name comes from the fact that it’s normally cooked until quite toasted and dark in color. 

To make a pan quemado, form the dough into a ball. You can cut a cross into the top of the dough, or make a few cuts into the top to give it a different look.  

The egg wash

Once the dough shapes have risen, you’ll want to paint them with a beaten egg. The egg adds shine and helps keep the dough soft. It also allows the sugar topping to stick to the top of the bread.

Beat an egg and gently paint all over the surface of the risen dough shapes, taking care not to press too hard so the shapes won’t fall. Then, sprinkle a generous amount of sugar over the top of the dough. For the pan quemado, the sugar is normally sprinkled in a ring around the top of the bread.

Modern monas with chocolate eggs are also often covered with colored sprinkles. (You can even make your own healthier homemade sprinkles!)

Baking

All that’s left is to bake the sweet breads. When you notice that the bread is nearing the end of the final rise, preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit (180ºC). Bake the bread for around 20 minutes, until golden in color. Some people prefer cooking the bread a bit longer to give a darker, more toasted appearance. (Thus, the pan quemado name.) Bake the bread to suit your preference.

Remove the baked bread from he oven and cool it on cooling racks.

Serving

Monas are often given away in a small, wicker Easter basket. Below you can see my son with some of monas and baskets he was given over the years.

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Traditionally, the mona is brought to enjoy with friends and family outdoors, enjoying the beautiful spring weather if possible!

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