What Italian Easter cake is shaped like a dove?

What Italian Easter cake is shaped like a dove? Colomba is the answer: its full Italian name, colomba pasquale, literally means “Easter dove.” This traditional Milanese Easter bread is baked in a distinctive dove-shaped mould and typically topped with almonds and pearl sugar.

Colomba’s rich, naturally leavened dough resembles panettone. It is made with flour, eggs, sugar, butter, and yeast, but usually includes candied citrus peel instead of panettone’s familiar raisins. That difference helps distinguish the two festive breads.

Although colomba is now treated as a traditional Easter speciality, its modern commercial history is relatively recent. Advertising director Dino Villani developed it for the Milanese company Motta in the 1930s, adapting panettone dough and production machinery for Easter sales. The dove shape supplied a fitting Christian symbol of peace and resurrection.

A common mix-up is calling pandoro or panettone Easter cakes. Both are Italian sweet breads, but pandoro is associated mainly with Christmas and has a star-shaped profile, while panettone is usually dome-shaped.