The Easter Dove

The dove is the typical dessert the main defining thing about Easter.

It is a leavened cake with ingredients very similar to Panettone and Pandoro but shaped like a dove.

This cake traditionally closes the Easter lunch with chocolate eggs.

Since ancient times, infact, the egg and the dove were attributed strong symbolic values of peace, rebirth and love.

However, the Easter origins are much more recent.

Dino Villani, communications director of the Milanese Company Motta, already famous for his Christmas panettone, in the 1930s created a cake similar to the panettone, but destined for the solemnity of Easter in order to exploit the same machines and the same pasta.

Then the recipe was taken up by Angelo Vergani, who in 1944 founded Vergani srl, a Company from Milan that still produces doves today.

The boom and the definitive consecration of this sweet Easter symbol is due to the advertiser Cassandre in 1930.
Motta commissioned him a poster on the dove with the slogan “Colomba Easter Motta, the sweet that tastes of spring”.