Good Friday Good Dessert

Easter weekend off work so we invited Jonathan's family over for lunch after church on Good Friday morning.  We prepared steak on the BBQ with the compound butters (check out this post), potato salad and our project dessert - the frozen lemon mousse.  Something we hadn't tried before but wanted to make!

It had a few different parts to it - candying the lemon rind, such a cool and yummy way to prepare this and very good for decoration!  Lemon curd to make, strain and chill.  And then of course the cream part of the dessert to mix with the curd, all before putting them in the freezer in their molds. While they were freezing there was also a lemon sauce to make!  And for something extra we melted some chocolate and made some swirls and other decoration that we also froze ready for when we plated the dessert.

Lemon Curd in preparation

Candying the lemon rind, yummy! 

A long time ago I found a great shaped silicone mold tray but had never used it... But now here was my chance!  We did 4 in the molds, and then a few extra desserts in ring molds.

Here's how it ended up:

5 around our little table, nice and snug for a family meal!

Frozen Lemon Mousse
with dark chocolate swirl and raspberries.

Thank you Martha Stewart for this recipe.  We loved trying it out - both making and eating!! :-)

Easter Bakes and Makes

This Easter meant lots of family get togethers which for me means the opportunity to make and to bake as much as I can!  Just like my 'About Me' says, freedom is boredom so busy time is the best time - and I made the most of my Easter days off work!

First stop was Easter cards.  Just a little simple design using our scalloped circle punch from our wedding (it has been well used since!) and some printables I found of course, on Pinterest!

Next stop more scalloped punches... A quick and easy bit of bunting using paint strips (thank you Walmart hehe), the punch and some cute yellow ribbon.

Then come the Easter treats!  A big bunny cutter and my tiny little farm animal cookie cutters led to these sugar cookie goodie bags iced and decorated for an Easter treat for everybody.

After seeing this on Pinterest from Sweet Vanilla Bean I HAD to try it!  Chocolate dipped peeps, so cool! Super fun easy make anybody could do (even Jonathan joined me for this!)... just melt some chocolate and coloured wafers dip and go!  Just be prepared for a sweet SWEET day of eating!

Although I have some more Easter baking and making to post about I think that's all the Easter treats that will make it onto this post!

Here are the finished products:

Chicks in a Nest

Happy Easter everybody!  I love making Easter Cakes.  I love pure white fondant icing and mini eggs and always love to include those.  This year I had my basic design planned out, a white cake, with mini eggs around and perhaps a few fondant Easter animal cut outs.  However, as you will see in a later Easter post we had an abundance of egg whites left over from our Good Friday dessert so for fun I thought I would make some meringue nests - why not have a couple of pavlovas hanging around in the kitchen! :-D  Once they had cooked overnight I realised when decorating my cake one of the meringues could be a nest.

So with our extra meringue nests and our decorated Peep chicks the cake came together with all of these elements.

Oh and I almost forgot to say, the cake inside was a lemon sponge cake with butter cream filling of course!

* Happy Easter *

One a penny, two a penny ♫

♫ Hot cross buns.  Hot cross buns.  One a penny, two a penny.  Hot Cross Buns ♫

Who else can still remember how to play this on the recorder?!

It's Easter time which means it's time for Hot Cross Buns.  After our bread baking adventures in the past year we decided this year we wanted to try making them ourselves.

Not only to try it out and be adventurous, but also so that we could be particular about how they look and taste.  We didn't want the icing version of the cross on top - we both love the hard crunchy cross and wanted to recreate that.  Also I really dislike a strong cinnamon flavour and didn't want to spend a few weeks and calories buying and trying all different kinds of Hot Cross Buns from different supermarkets!!

So we did it!  We made our own.  Here's how it went:

A little, erm, more overdone than we would have liked but only a little!  Tasted good and that's what matters.