Coconut Easter Eggs fun for the kids

I love to spend time in the kitchen with my kids. We always have a great time even though more often than not it means 3 times the cleaning at the end.

Making these super sweet coconut Easter eggs together has become a tradition that we enjoy together every year. Sometimes we invite along friends and make it a Easter egg making party along with a bit of Easter basket making craft and the kids get to take home all the eggs they make at the end.

Make sure that everyone washes their hands before you start....although once you start there will probably be lots of hand licking. For that sticky spitty reason I like to make sure that everyone has a separate basket ready to pop their finished eggs into.


The sweet baskets in the pictures are from Sharnel Dollar Designs.

Coconut Easter Eggs make around  30 eggs

Ingredients

500gm icing sugar sifted
3 cups dessicated coconut
1 tin condensed milk
1 tsp vanilla (optional)
food colour

Combine icing sugar, coconut, condensed milk and vanilla in a large bowl and mix well and all ingredients are combined evenly. I love to let the kids do the mixing even though it takes a little bit longer and a lot of cleaning up afterwards. As this mixture is quite firm you might need to help the kids out towards the end.

Divide mixture into 4 and colour as desired. Make sure the colour is mixed in well and distributed evenly. If it's just for the family I don't see any problems with letting the kids mix the colour in with their freshly washed hands squashing it together and kneading it.

At this stage the mixture should not be too wet, you can leave it uncovered for 10mins or so to let it set a bit, or if you are concerned you have added to much colour pop a tiny bit extra coconut and icing sugar to firm it up.

Break off small pieces about the size of a ping pong ball and roll between the palms of your hands to form into an egg shape. This part is especially fun for kids and I always let mine break off sections and roll however they want. Making perfect eggs is not important but having fun is.

If you would like to make 'real' looking eggs leave some of the mixture plain and colour some yellow to make 'yolks'. Make the yellow into a tiny ball and then flatten out a ping pong ball sized piece of natural colour mixture, flatten it out and wrap around the yellow 'yolk'. Roll the egg in between your palms until it resembles an egg in shape.

Eggs can be stored in an airtight container for at least 7 days if they last that long.

Easter Egg Nests with Rose Fairy Floss Cupcake Toppers

My lovely friend Sandy surprised me the other day with a packet of super cute striped cupcake papers, some rosewater and beautiful rose persian fairy floss.

Oooohhh I thought to myself, what a lovely bunch of cakey things I'll have to make something special with them, and so I did.

They inspired me to make these very sweet Easter Egg nest Cupcake Toppers.

I am in love with the rose Persian Fairy Floss, it is so silky and stringy looking, it has a different texture to normal fairy floss. However sadly just like real floss it does not last long once out of it's packet and after a few hours my toppers had melted into a soggy nest. They still looked ok just not as spectacularly fluffy as when I originally made them. I would say make them just before your about to pop them out on display.

Also the Robert Gordon Paper Cups.....soooooo cute, however they do look a bit greasy when baked with a high butter content vanilla cupcake (and really do you want any other sort?) I just popped another one over the top and it looked fine. They are a significant improvement on the older, yet still super pretty ones.  I'm wondering if the Australian regulations limit the amount of plastic/waxish coating they can use I remember reading somewhere an issue with the Wilton nut cups in the US.

They do make cute containers regardless, see them with the mini Easter eggs.

Tutorial for Easter Egg Nest Cupcake Toppers

Ingredients
Cupcakes topped with a buttercream swirl
Fondant in various pastel colours
Persian Fairy Floss ( www.pariya.com)
mini Easter eggs - these ones were from Big W in Australia

Using a blossom cutter cut out fondant in the desired colour. My Blossom cutter was 6cm and I used a variety of pastel colours. Place the cut out shapes onto parchment paper and allow to set for a few days.

Make cucpakes and decorate with a swirl of buttercream.

Top each cupcake with a fondant disk.

Pull out small sections of the fairy floss ensuring your hands are clean and very dry. Shape the floss into small nests to fit on top of the fondant blossom disks.

Finally place a couple of small Easter eggs into the nests.

Hot Cross Bun Cake Pops for Easter

Ok so I've been having a little bit of trouble getting into the Easter decorating groove.

I love a cute bunny cookie as much as the next person, but honestly there are so many really great ones already out there I just don't think I can add anything amazingly inspirational just at the moment.

So instead I'm going with super yummy.

These were supposed to be a lightly spiced cake ball based on the Hot Cross Muffin recipe of mine published HERE in the March 2011 Peekaboo magazine.


Instead they ended up being chocolate cake. I decorated a cake for my niece's 7th birthday on the weekend and carved a bit off to make a bag shape, and we all know that cake pops are the perfect way to use up all that excess cake and frosting.


Here is a quick peek of the cake I made for my niece. The instructions to make this cake is from 50 Easy Party Cakes by Debbie Brown. If you'd like to win the cookbook so you can make your very own make up bag cake like this one CLICK HERE as I have a competition running until the 14th of April 2011 to win 2 cookbooks.

Oh and here is my token bunny.....but he's not edible, my daughter stuck him on while I was taking the pictures and I kinda though it was cute.


Instructions after jump

Creme Egg Easter Macarons

A while ago I came across a site that had a recipe for Cadbury Creme Eggs.

Wow I though Cadbury Creme Eggs on tap that could be cool! But as I'm no longer 8 there are really only so many I can eat these days so I didn't end up making them. I stored away the idea for a maybe one day closer to Easter kinda thing.

Anyway as it's closer to Easter I realised that it might be fun to take the recipe and incorporate it with some macarons to make Creme Egg Macarons.

For some reason I felt a bit odd marring a dainty macaron with something so commercial and highly processed as the Creme Egg, but hey it tastes good so I'm gonna ignore that funny feeling.

I based the fondant filling on this recipe (Click here) but reduced the amount of sugar. I also used liquid glucose instead of corn syrup, simply because I know that everyone in Australia will ask what they can use instead of corn syrup.

I get my liquid glucose from Coles in the baking aisle near where the cake decorations, colours and flavours are in a clear jar with a red lid. You can also get it from deli's and incidently most good deli's will also sell Karo corn syrup here in Australia.

Also I dipped the eggs in chocolate thinned with a little vegetable oil once again as people ask me if you can do it. Yup I usually use copha melted with the wilton melts but it seems vegetable oil works as well and actually seems to make it melt a little easier. I didn't like the taste as much but that's a personal thing. The macarons in the picture had been sitting out at room temperature for a day and not refrigerated at all and it's quite hot and humid here at the moment so yes they do set using vegetable oil.


I wanted to mention one of my blog friends ButterSugarHeart had a similar idea and made the macarons using real Cadbury Creme Eggs so for a different version pop on over and have a look.

Creme Egg Macarons for Easter

French Macarons

190g (6  5/8 ounce) ground almonds
190g (6  5/8 ounce) Icing (powdered) Sugar
140g Egg Whites, (5 ounce) aged at least 3 days, separated into 2 lots of 70g (2 1/2 ounce)
190g (6  5/8 ounce) Granulated Sugar
48g ( 1 5/8 ounce) Water

1. Mix the ground almonds and icing sugar together and pulse a few times in food processor to make almond meal finer. Do not over process as the meal can become oily. Sieve into a large bowl. Add  70g (2 1/2ounce) of the egg whites to the sugar/almond mixture but don’t mix in.

2. Place remaining 70g (2 1/2 ounce) of egg whites in bowl of mixer fitted with the whisk.

3. Pop granulated sugar and water into saucepan stir to combine and cook without stirring to 118C. If required brush down the sides of the pan to stop crystallisation from occurring. Once the mixture reaches 115C start mixing the egg whites on high (The eggwhites should be quite stiffly whipped before the syrup is added). Once the sugar syrup reaches 118C remove from heat and immediately pour in a thin stream down the side of the mixer bowl continuing to whisk on high.

4. Continue to whisk the meringue on high until the side of the bowl is only a little warm to touch, around 50C.

5. Add meringue mixture to almond mixture and using a large spatula fold the mixture together until it starts to shine and forms a ribbon that stays visible for about 30 seconds.

6. Add the mixture to a piping bag fitted with a plain tip and pipe small circles in lines onto parchment lined baking sheets. To make the macarons as even as possible I apply a constant slow pressure to the piping bag and count a few numbers like up to 3 for each one.

7. Set aside for about 30 minutes or until the macarons have formed a skin that doesn't stick to your finger. If the weather is humid this will take longer. If the weather is very humid it is best to make these in an area with an air conditioner which reduces humidity.

8. Preheat oven to 140C (285 F). Once ready bake the macaroons for around 13 to 15 minutes depending on size, they should not be browned. To test if the macaron is cooked you can open the door and gently press on the side of the macaron. If it jiggles on the 'foot' it is not cooked close the door and cook for another minute or 2 and repeat the jiggle test.

Remove the baking trays and immediately slide off the macarons and the parchment onto the work surface and let cool completely before removing the shells.

Fondant Filling

1/4 cup liquid glucose
30 g unsalted Butter (1 oz) at room temp
1tsp vanilla
1 cup icing sugar sifted (powdered sugar)
Yellow food colour

Combine liquid glucose, butter and vanilla and mix well. I used a hand held beater. The mixture will resemble condensed milk in appearence and consistency. Add icing sugar (at this stage my hand held beater was struggling a little so I mixed by hand) and add enough food colour to achieve the desired colour. Cover until needed.

Assembly

Match the macarons into like sizes (when you are piping macarons by hand you will end up with different sized macarons. They look best if you can find similar sizes to join together)

Dollop fondant onto macarons. The mixture is very thick but if you allow it to rest it will kinda sink and spread over the macaron half and then you can join it with another.

Melt around 400g chocolate and if required add vegetable oil to make the chocolate into a dip-able consistency.

Using a dipping fork or normal fork dip the joined macarons into the chocolate and place on trays covered with baking paper until set.

If you have left over chocolate you can pour it onto baking paper and allow it to set. It can then be stored in an airtight ziplock back and be used next time you need dipping chocolate.

Chocolate Chip Hot Cross Muffins for Easter and the new Peekaboo magazine

Before you get too taken away with these Chocolate Chip Hot Cross Muffins I have to mention that Peekaboo Magazine has published an original recipe I created in their latest March Issue.

Yay for me!

They are super delicious Cranberry Hot Cross Muffins made with wholemeal flour and macadamia oil, so you won't feel so bad about popping them into the kids lunchbox or serving them for Easter brunch.

While I was waiting for the magazine to come out I had a bit of a craving for them, but decided to modify the recipe a bit and came up with these wholemeal chocolate chip hot cross muffins.

I'm thinking the wholemeal flour cancels out any potential unhealthy qualities in the chocolate (# note I'm not actually a qualified nutritionist so it's possible and probable this information could be completely incorrect).

and if you like the colour combination on my photo's here I'm gonna have to admit I totally stole it from Sharnel Dollar who styled the Peekaboo Shoot.

I didn't however steal the cute little baskets in the above shots, I bought those from Sharnel's online store. How completely perfect are they for Easter treats.

Chocolate Chip Hot Cross Muffin Recipe after jump