A visit to a pastelaria in Lisbon in the lead up to Easter brings with it new surprises. Alongside the usual pastries and cakes, you’ll spot folares, loaves of sweet bread, some topped with hardboiled eggs, and many surrounded by a colorful assortment of almonds. This type of bread, which contains ingredients forbidden during Lent, has long been associated with Easter and the feasting that occurs on this holiday. “After the winter months and the long fast during Lent, the Easter brings an intense activity in terms of culinary preparations and the exchange of cakes, namely the folares,” writes Mouette Barboff in her book A Tradição do Pão em Portugal (Bread in Portugal).

Folar is the generic name given to traditional Easter sweet bread in Portugal. Making it from scratch is somewhat of a long process, but being confined due to the coronavirus crisis, we seem to have a bit more time on our hands than expected. My family’s folar recipe is from my grandmother Felismina, who was from Rosmaninhal, near Mação (in the center of Portugal). As long as I can remember we would have this sweet bread around Easter. (A similar type of sweet bread is also baked around November 1, for All Saints’ Day.)