Holy Week has always struck me as a unique period of time. As with all festivals, there is something comforting in its familiarity, in the repetition of rituals - the hymns, the folding of palms, the quiet solemnity of Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and (if you're brave) Holy Saturday mass, with the same stories told over and over. Naturally the food consumed over the week has special resonance - announcing the end of lent and its associated mortification of the flesh (I once had a theory that my mum was on a mission to feed us only white rice and green beans for 40 days to enhance the suffering) with the promise of joyful feasting on Easter Sunday and, if we're lucky, the arrival of spring.

Making Egyptian kahk

Unlike at Christmas, when the plethora of seasonal treats are made throughout the month of December, the brevity of Holy week necessitates several consecutive days devoted to baking. After all, why settle for one Easter cake when you can make five? In our house, the origins of these dishes stretch from Baghdad through to Cairo, Athens and Florence. There is a bowl of date halawa, softened with butter, mixed with fennel and rose water to be spread on crackers, round, almost savoury fennel biscuits, brushed with egg to a golden hue, sinfully buttery ghorayeba biscuits that crumble at a glance and, if we have the energy, almond cantucci as well. Good Friday morning is devoted to dying at least a dozen hard boiled eggs, and to baking hot cross buns, which are eaten warm and buttered after church at 3pm, The highlight of the week, however, is the ritual making of Egyptian kahk - small shortbread-like biscuits with a chewy heart of orange-scented dates. The process takes an entire day, usually spent around my grandmother's tiny Formica kitchen table, with my grandfather hovering at the door, offering to sample for quality control. The yeast must be prepared, the butter melted and the dates softened, before being rolled into perfectly round marbles. Then comes the kneading and shaping of the pastry, which must be precisely pinched and plied in order to create several hundred uniform boulders. It's an intensive process (my grandmother is a stickler for pastry perfection), but always maintains a certain charm and feeling of excitement. The act of gathering around a table to make kahk, like generations of women before us is comforting; it almost feels like an assertion of faith - as these humble biscuits form part of a crucial celebration. They are more than just an excuse to bake, otherwise we'd make them all year. Like many Easter foods, they signify the celebration of  the end of fasting and the hope of new life following the resurrection.

Dying eggs on Good Friday

Easter foods are notable in their explicit symbolic resonance; many of them retelling in their own way the story of Holy Week. In Greece, tsoureki Easter bread is decorated with eggs dyed red to represent Jesus' blood, Russian pashka (a sort of cheesecake mountain) is decorated with the letters XB meaning "Christ is risen", while capirotada, (Mexican bread pudding) contains cloves that represent the nails of the cross. Not to mention the ubiquitous shape on our beloved hot cross buns. Such overt symbolism is perhaps unsurprising when we consider the story upon which the Easter triduum begins. That is, a meal. And not any old supper, but the Passover, which is in itself an act of symbolic remembrance. Each element of the Seder (the Hebrew name for the meal) has a specific role in the commemoration of the flight of the Jews from Egypt. Participants eat, among other things, unleavened bread, as in their ancestors' haste to flee from persecution there was no time to let it rise, and bitter herbs dipped in saltwater to represent both the promise of new life combined with the suffering of slavery. To add to this sense of ceremony, it was at this very Passover meal that Jesus announced the transformation of bread and wine into his body and blood. Whether we believe this or not (or indeed any part of the Easter story) the point is that at this moment, food, the quintessence of earthliness, was raised up, sanctified and made holy. According to the most widely read book in the world, food now represented more than just the fruit of man's labour, but love, sacrifice, and, ultimately, God himself. And it is at this very moment in the gospel that the bible actively encourages eating in remembrance - instigating the symbolic practice of communion. Thus food becomes a way to feel closer to God.

The 11 balls of marzipan on top of Simnel cake represent the disciples (Judas is cast aside)

It is for this reason that Easter food holds such crucial symbolism - by creating dishes that overtly evoke the Easter story Christians can feel closer to it and what it represents. Thus these celebratory foods are not merely seasonal delicacies, but form an active part of the festival, symbolic of the ultimate triumph of love and goodness, and the hope of new life and a better future. Which arguably makes them the most important things we cook all year.