As a Christian who believes in celebrating with food, I have had a considerable tussle in my mind about how to write about Easter feasting from a theologically informed perspective.
What is the role and symbolism of food at Easter?

First and foremost, I want to state that food is not the thing to be idolized and worshiped.
The Christian understanding of this celebration pivots on the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ as described in the New Testament. Feast (and indeed fasting by some at Lent) are the way food can be used to remind us of our state before God, including our need for forgiveness, symbolizing the journey of His people (think the Passover meal) and the generous grace and hospitality of God as shown in the Paschal Lamb.
And I detest the over-the-top commercialism of this significant calender event. Chocolate eggs and hot crossed buns appear on the shelves just weeks after Christmas. My only concession to this is that it might just make people make the link between celebrating Christ’s birth at Christmas time and the Christian understanding of Easter. “For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.” John 3:16

So, the development of the Easter celebration in a nutshell (or should I say egg shell?) is:
There is no reference to Easter in the Bible and the young Christian Church did not celebrate a yearly observance of Christ’s resurrection. They actually lived on the basis of it every day.
The closest yearly observance was in the form of a “Christian” Passover–Passover already being an important feast to the Jews, commemorating their deliverance from slavery and death.
Many Jews who converted to Christ kept many customs Luke 22:14-20, and with the Passover feast so close in time to Jesus death and resurrection, many began observing a Christian passover in memory of Christ being the sacrificial passover Lamb. This added another layer of symbolism–that of God’s deliverance of humanity from slavery to sin and eternal death without God.  1Corinthians 5:7-8
I am not going to go into the controversy about the dates of these celebrations but will simply say that over time the Christian celebration came to include observing the day Jesus rode into Jerusalem prior to His death, known as Palm Sunday; Good Friday (or black Friday as it is sometimes called) when Jesus was crucified; and the day He was raised to life by God…which became known as Easter Sunday.
Why the word Easter, though?
Assimilation of pagan ritual into Christian observances was common.
The origin of the name Easter has to do with the spring time celebration of a pre-Christian Mesopotamian goddess of fertility “Ishtar” or as I read else where, the Anglo Saxon goddess of fertility Eoester. The symbolism of fertility, as seen in rabbits and particularly new life as seen in eggs was common. Eggs were layered with Christian meaning–Christ’s resurrection = new life.
(The Easter Bunny has never had church acknowledgement as a Christian symbol).
And just a little aside: my husband has a hard to control urge to smash the ears of all those chocolate bunnies stacked high on the supermarket shelves.

The church’s acknowledged celebration of Easter didn’t happen until about AD 325, but even now many Christians reject the historically pagan flavour and the more and more commercial nature of this calender event. Many Christians choose to use the specific day’s terms, and in particular refer to the day Jesus was raised as Resurrection Sunday.

So, back to food and the Easter period.
“Easter foods are primarily those of Easter Sunday, the day on which Jesus rose from the dead, a day of special rejoicing for Christians, who rejoice too at reaching the end of the long Lenten fast. The concept of renewal/rebirth is responsible for the important role played by the egg in Easter celebrations, a role which no doubt antedates Christianity. There are also special foods associated with the other days in the Easter calendar…In Europe, there is a general tradition, not confined to Christians, that Easter is the time to start eating the season’s new lamb, which is just coming onto the market then…Easter breads, cakes, and biscuits are a major category of Easter foods, perhaps especially noticeable in the predominantly Roman Catholic countries of south and central Europe…Traditional breads are laden with symbolism in their shapes, which may make reference to Christian faith…In England breads or cakes flavoured with bitter tansy juice used to be popular Easter foods…Simnel cake has come to be regarded as an Easter specialty, although it was not always so. The most popular English Easter bread is the hot cross bun…”
—Oxford Companion to Food, Alan Davidson [Oxford University Press:Oxford] 1999 (p. 266-7)

Eggs:
“Because the use of eggs was forbidden during Lent, they were brought to the table on Easter Day, coloured red to symbolize the Easter joy. This custom is found not only in the Latin but also in the Oriental Churches. The symbolic meaning of a new creation of mankind by Jesus risen from the dead was probably an invention of later times. The custom may have its origin in paganism, for a great many pagan customs, celebrating the return of spring, gravitated to Easter. The egg is the emblem of the germinating life of early spring.” – The Catholic Encyclopedia
Chocolate companies thrive on the symbols of bunnies and eggs.

Hot Cross Buns:
Bakeries thrive on the symbol of the cross and spices of Christ’s death and burial in the form of Hot cross buns.

Hot Cross Buns:
These spicey fruit buns traditionally are eaten on Good Friday–nowadays often at morning tea after the Good Friday service.
The practice of eating special small cakes at the time of the Spring festival seems to date back at least to the ancient Greeks, but the English custom of eating spiced buns on Good Friday was perhaps institutionalized in Tudor times, when a London bylaw was introduced forbidding the sale of such buns except on Good Friday, at Christmas, and at burials. The first intimation we have of a cross appearing on the bun, in remembrance of Christ’s cross, comes in Poor Robin’s Amanack (1733): Good Friday comes this month, the old woman runs, with one or two a penny hot cross buns’ (a version of the once familiar street-cry “One-a-penny, two-a penny, hot cross buns’). At this stage the cross was presumably simply incised with a knife, rather than piped on in pastry, as is the modern commercial practice. As yet, too, the name of such buns was just cross buns: James Boswell recorded in his Life of Johnson (1791): 9 Apr. An. 1773 Being Good Friday I breakfasted with him and cross-buns.’ The fact that they were generally sold hot, however, seems to have led by the early nineteenth century to the incorporation of hot into their name.”
—An A-Z of Food & Drink, John Ayto [Oxford University Press:Oxford] 2002 (p. 164)
I was also informed in my growing up that the spices in the buns were to remind us of the spices used in the anointing of Jesus’ body before burial.
Many cultures have special Easter breads, such as Kulich, often rich with butter and eggs.
But testament to our times, Easter chocolates come in all forms and shapes now with no nod to the symbol of new life. Easter buns, as they are often now called, have morphed into all sorts of flavours, with no hint of Christian  meaning–many have lost the cross, and/or have no spices.

Fish mongers do a roaring trade for Good Friday because of a tradition or Roman Catholic expectation of not eating meat on Fridays.

Lamb:
On resurrection Sunday, many cultures have lamb as a main component of a celebratory meal, in reference to Jesus, the Paschal sacrificial Lamb of God.

In observing the days of Easter, I believe the use of symbolic foods are not and should not be mandatory church doctrine or practice. In Hebrews 13:9 we read “Do not let all kinds of strange teachings lead you from the right way. It is good to receive inner strength from God’s grace, and not by obeying rules about foods; those who obey these rules have not been helped by them.”

Our use of these food symbols are just that–symbols.
Our justification with God is not through the practice of consuming certain foods in certain ways–the redeeming death and resurrection of Jesus is. Galations 2:20