Easter Baking Ideas Round-up

Here’s a roundup with links to Easter Baking recipes we have shared on the blog this year.  You can check out last year’s round up post here where we shared some cupcake and biscuit ideas.  We hope you have a great Easter weekend and take some time to relax and catch up with friends and family.

Easter Chicken Cupcakes

Easter Blondies

Easter Nest Cupcakes

Easy Creme Egg Cupcakes

There’s also been some great baking ideas being shared on some of your fave blogs.  I wanted to share some of my favourite finds with you.  For more inspiration check out:

• Lydia’s awesome Creme Egg cupcakes – she shares how to make a Creme Egg centre for your cupcakes over at Lydia Bakes.
• Kirsten has made a delicious and decadent looking Chocolate Cheesecake with mini Easter eggs mixed through the filling over on High Tea With Dragons.
• Julie made her own Chocolate Egg-shaped toppers to decorate some cupcakes – you could get creative and make other shapes too.  Take a squiz at them on her blog A Slice in the Life of Julie.
• Over the ditch, Steph from Raspberri Cupcakes has made Easter trifles decorated with the cutest Chick Macarons.
• Cakepop queen Bakerella has done it again, this time with her Easter Bunny pops.

Happy Easter and Happy Baking!

Easy Creme Egg Cupcakes

These cupcakes are a great idea if you want to do some baking and whip something up quickly for Easter.  They are really easy to make, yet oh so decadent.  I baked mine with mini Easter eggs hidden inside them, but you can leave them out if you like – just skip over this part in the recipe.

Makes 12.

Ingredients:
Cupcakes:
2 cups flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
3 – 5 teaspoons cocoa
1 ½ cups sugar
¾ cup oil (sunflower or canola)
1 cup water
3 tablespoons vinegar (white or malt)
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
12 mini Easter eggs (optional)

Buttercream and Decoration:
125g butter softened
2 ½ cups icing sugar, sifted
2-3 tablespoons hot water (warm icing makes the colour take better)
½ teaspoon vanilla essence
food colouring (optional)
6 Creme eggs

Method:
Preheat the oven to 190°C.  Line a 12 hole muffin tin with baking cups.
Mix the dry ingredients together in a large bowl with a fork.  Add the oil to the dry ingredients, but don’t stir.
In a small bowl, mix together the water, vinegar and vanilla essence.  Pour into the dry ingredients and mix together thoroughly with a fork.
Fill the baking cups ¾ of the way full with the mixture.  Place a mini Easter egg into each muffin cup so that it is just covered by the cupcake mixture.   Bake for 15 – 20 minutes or until a skewer inserted comes out clean.  Remove from the oven and let cool in the pan for 5 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely.

To make the buttercream, cream butter in or with a mixer until pale. On a low speed add icing sugar alternating with hot water and vanilla essence. Continue to beat until light and fluffy or until it’s reached a consistency you are happy with. If you want coloured buttercream, add a few drops of food colouring and mix through.
Pipe a circle of buttercream around the outside of the top of each cupcake (use your favourite piping tip or simply make a piping bag out of a snap-lock bag and snip off one of the corners).  Cut the Creme eggs in half along the join.  Place a Creme egg half on top of each cupcake in the middle of the circle of buttercream.

Easter Nest Cupcakes

Aren’t these cute?! They are so easy to make and would make a lovely little gift for Easter (the cost of Easter eggs is crazy!) or an easy bit of themed baking to take into work or have on hand for unexpected visitors over the long weekend.

To make them I just used my Easy Peasy Chocolate Cake recipe and divided it between 20 cupcake papers. You could easily use Mel’s recipe for the Easter Chicken Cupcakes and just decorate your cupcakes differently so you have a bit of variety. To decorate I used a basic buttercream and added 2 tablespoons cocoa (you can add more or less and make it to your own tastes). I spread the frosting thinly over the top of each cupcake with a knife, piped a circle with a Wilton 2D tip so it looked like a nest, inside the nest I placed 3-4 mini eggs and a chick.

Buttercream and decoration:
125g butter softened
2 ½ cups icing sugar, sifted
2 tablespoons cocoa, sifted
2-3 tablespoons hot water (warm icing makes the colour take better)
½ teaspoon vanilla essence
Mini eggs (I used M&M’s speckled eggs) – you will need 3-4 eggs per cupcake.
Mini chicks

Cream butter in or with a mixer until pale. On a low speed add icing sugar/cocoa alternating with hot water and vanilla essence. Continue to beat until light and fluffy or until it’s reached a consistency you are happy with.

Are they good?! Max thought so, barely got through snapping photos before the baking thief struck.

Easter Blondies

When I tried Kinder Mini Eggs I wanted to create something to give you all an excuse to buy them (that is if you need an excuse…), these eggs combined with the deliciousness of Mere’s blondie are perfection! You could use other mini eggs but I really urge you to try the Kinder ones, I really don’t know what I’m going to do for a chocolate fix when Easter is over…

Ingredients:
115 grams butter
1 cup sugar
¼ teaspoon salt
1 large egg
1 ½ teaspoons vanilla extract
1 cup all purpose flour
½ teaspoon baking powder
1 cup mini Easter eggs (x2 85gram bags of Kinder Mini Eggs)

Method:
Preheat oven to 180°C. Line a 20x20cm tin with baking paper.
In a large bowl, cream together butter and sugar until light.
Beat in salt, egg and vanilla extract until well combined.
Add in flour, baking powder and choc chips and stir until no streaks of dry ingredients remain.
Pour dough – it will be thick – into prepared baking dish and smooth it into an even layer.
Bake for about 30 minutes, until set and the edges are just very lightly browned.
Cool in the pan before slicing.

What are you thinking of baking for Easter? Mel and I still have a couple of cute and easy ideas to share with you. I think I will definitely be doing another batch of these!

Easter Chicken Cupcakes

While shopping the other day I spotted a pack of little yellow chickens made out of pipe cleaners at the supermarket – pretty tacky, but I bought them anyway.  They inspired me to make these ‘Easter Chicken’ cupcakes, which were really simple to whip up.  I love how the long sprinkles look like messy feathers.  If you are a bit of a fondant fan, you could whip up some little wings and feet for these guys too!
My friend Jarrah gave me the recipe for the chocolate cupcake that I used (I just added in some mini Easter eggs as a special treat); it’s a great recipe which doesn’t involve fussing around with melting butter or whisking eggs.  Thanks for sharing Jarrah!

Makes 12.

Ingredients:
Cupcakes:
2 cups flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
3 – 5 teaspoons cocoa
1 ½ cups sugar
¾ cup oil (sunflower or canola)
1 cup water
3 tablespoons vinegar (white or malt)
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
12 mini caramel-filled Easter eggs

Buttercream and Decoration:
125g butter softened
2 ½ cups icing sugar, sifted
2-3 tablespoons hot water (warm icing makes the colour take better)
½ teaspoon vanilla essence
Yellow food colouring
Yellow sprinkles (I used nearly two 70g packs)
24 chocolate drops
4-6 orange jube lollies

Method:
Preheat the oven to 190°C.  Line a 12 hole muffin tin with baking cups. 
Mix the dry ingredients together in a large bowl with a fork.  Add the oil to the dry ingredients, but don’t stir.
In a small bowl, mix together the water, vinegar and vanilla essence.  Pour into the dry ingredients and mix together thoroughly with a fork.
Fill the baking cups ¾ of the way full with the mixture.  Place a mini Easter egg into each muffin cup so that it is just covered by the cupcake mixture.   Bake for 15 – 20 minutes or until a skewer inserted comes out clean.  Remove from the oven and let cool in the pan for 5 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely.

To make the buttercream, cream butter in or with a mixer until pale. On a low speed add icing sugar alternating with hot water and vanilla essence. Continue to beat until light and fluffy or until it’s reached a consistency you are happy with. Add a few drops of the yellow food colouring and mix through.
Spread about a tablespoon of the butter cream on the tops of each cupcake.  Pour your sprinkles into a bowl and dip each cupcake in to cover the buttercream.
Dot the backs of the chocolate drops with buttercream and place two on each cupcake to be your chicken’s eyes.  Cut the orange jube lollies into triangles (you need 12 triangles), smear some butter cream on the back of each triangle, then place on the cupcakes to be the Chicken’s nose.

Birds Nest Cookies

An Easter recipe just in time… These cookies are cute and easy to make!

Ingredients:
Cookies:
215 grams butter, room temperature
½  cup plus 2 tablespoons sugar
1 ¾ cups all-purpose flour, plus more for rolling out dough
¼ teaspoon salt
½ cup Dutch-process cocoa powder, sifted

Icing:
10 grams butter
½ - ¾ cup icing sugar
1 - 2 tablespoons cocoa
hot water

Topping:
Coconut
A few drops food colouring
Small Easter eggs

Method:
Pre- heat your oven to 180°C. Line two baking sheets with baking paper, and set aside.  In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, combine butter and sugar.
In a large bowl, combine flour, salt, and cocoa powder.  Add flour mixture to butter mixture; mix on low speed just until a stiff dough forms, about 2 minutes.  Transfer dough to a piece of plastic wrap, wrap tightly, and chill until firm, about 30 minutes. 
On a lightly floured surface, roll out chilled dough to a ½cm thickness.  Using a round cookie cutter, cut out cookies; place them on lined baking sheets.  Chill cookies until firm, about 20 minutes.
Bake cookies until set, about 12 - 15 minutes.
Transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.
While cookies cool make icing and colour your coconut by putting a few drops of food colouring in a plastic bag and rub coconut around to colour evenly.
Once cookies are cool place coconut on a tray, ice cookies with chocolate icing and dip in coconut.
Place 2 - 4 mini eggs on top of each ‘nest’.

Happy Easter from Courtenay and Melissa xox

Easter Baking Ideas

Easter is fast approaching so why not make some themed baking?  Here’s some ideas that we’ve tried out in the past:

Easter egg cupcakes – these cupcakes are decorated with mini Easter eggs and have a caramel one hidden inside them – Yum!

You could always whip up a batch of your favourite cupcakes and get creative with how you decorate them.  The ones in the picture above have Easter egg sprinkles and chocolate bunnies.  You could really get creative and make little fondant characters like bunnies or birds, or make pretty coloured eggs.

Another idea is to make a batch of cookies in Easter shapes and ice them.  The cookies pictured above have been iced using royal icing.  If using royal icing seems a little scary, a simple recipe you could use is the one that we made Christmas Cookies from - simply change the shape and colours to suit your Easter theme.  This would make a great holiday activity for kids, who will have heaps of fun decorating their biscuits.

Happy Easter!

Cinnamon Pull-Apart Loaf

I saw a friend of mine pin this recipe on Pinterest the other week and had to add to my board of things to bake, the recipe I followed came from ‘Joy the Baker’ whose loaf was a little tidier looking than mine but I think the more rustic look works too. It made the perfect late brunch treat in our house this morning and the best part was that most of the hard work had been done the night before as the recipe allows you to make the dough and chill it in the fridge the overnight. The bread was so soft and fluffy and the cinnamony sugary goodness is comforting after a lazy Sunday morning sleep in.

To make this heavenly little treat yourself you will need:

Ingredients:
Dough
2 ¾ cups + 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
¼ cup granulated sugar
2 ¼ teaspoons active dry yeast
½ teaspoon salt
60 grams butter
⅓ cup milk
¼ cup water
2 large eggs, at room temperature
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Filling
1 cup granulated sugar
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
½ teaspoon fresh ground nutmeg
50 grams butter, melted until browned

Method:
In a large mixing bowl whisk together 2 cups flour, sugar, yeast, and salt.  Set aside.
Whisk together eggs and set aside.
In a small saucepan, melt together milk and butter until butter has just melted.  Remove from the heat and add water and vanilla extract.  Let mixture stand for a couple of minutes.
Pour the milk mixture into the dry ingredients and mix with a wooden spoon.  Add the eggs and stir the mixture until the eggs are incorporated into the batter.  The eggs will feel soupy and it’ll seem like the dough and the eggs are never going to come together.  Keep stirring. 
Add the remaining ¾ cup of flour and stir with the spatula for about 2 minutes.  The mixture will be sticky.  That’s just right.
Place the dough is a large,  greased bowl.  Cover with plastic wrap and a clean kitchen towel.  Place in a warm space and allow to rest until doubled in size, about 1 hour. ***The dough can be risen until doubled in size, then refrigerated overnight for use in the morning.  If you’re using this method, just let the dough rest on the counter for 30 minutes before following the roll-out directions below.

While the dough rises, whisk together the sugar, cinnamon and nutmeg for the filling. Set aside.  Melt the 50 grams of butter until browned.  Set aside.  Grease a 9x5x3-inch  loaf pan.  Set that aside too.
Deflate the risen dough and knead about 2 tablespoons of flour into the dough.  Cover with a clean kitchen towel and let rest for 5 minutes. 

On a lightly floured work surface, use a rolling pin to roll the dough out.  The dough should be 30cm tall and about 50cm long.  If you can’t get the dough to 50cm long… that’s okay.  Just roll it as large as the dough will go. 
Use a pastry brush to spread melted butter across all of the dough.  Sprinkle with all of the sugar and cinnamon mixture.  It might seem like a lot of sugar but just do it!
Slice the dough vertically, into six equal-sized strips.  Stack the strips on top of one another and slice the stack into six equal slices once again.  You’ll have six stacks of six squares. 
Layer the dough squares in the loaf pan like a flip-book.  Place a kitchen towel over the loaf pan and allow in a warm place for 30 to 45 minutes or until almost doubled in size.

Place a rack in the center of the oven and preheat to 180°C.
Place loaf in the oven and bake for 30 to 35 minutes, until the top is very golden brown. The top may be lightly browned, but the center may still be raw.  A nice, dark, golden brown will ensure that the center is cooked as well.

Remove from the oven and allow to rest for 20 to 30 minutes. Run a butter knife around the edges of the pan to loosen the bread and invert onto a clean board.

Place a cake stand or cake plate on top of the  upside down loaf, and carefully invert so it’s right side up.  Serve warm with coffee or tea and if you feel like it you can make up some runny vanilla icing (icing sugar, water and a splash of vanilla essence) to drizzle over it.

I hope you enjoy this as much as we did this morning. I think that I will make it again for Easter  - that might give you the perfect excuse to make this as well.

Easter Egg Cupcakes

Today I made cupcakes for Easter.

I made them using the recipe Courtenay posted about for her Mars Bar cupcakes, except I put little Caramello eggs inside them, and some praline ones on top.

I also dusted the eggs placed on top with a shimmer powder to make them a little extra special :)

I tried making cookies too – they taste alright but look like a pre-school kid decorated them, so you aren’t going to see ‘em.

Happy Easter Everyone!

Easter Treats

I love holidays! Not just because it means I get time off work, but, because it’s an excuse to theme my baked goods. I have made two different lots of Easter goodies this year. I have been wanting to attempt “flooding” biscuits for a while now and was inspired to after seeing this.

The recipe for the shortbread biscuit is there as well as the icing. I used the shortbread recipe found in the good old Edmonds cookbook as I am familiar with it and know that it works for me. To cut the cookies I used an Easter Egg shaped cookie cutter I already had. Finally, to pipe I used a Kuhn Rikon Deco icing set I got from Living and Giving.

  So without further ado…

  Cute but a bit messy. I am determined to practice and get better, but they did taste good and I just loved the colours. In fact, pink and blue have become my signature colours for Easter 2010.

My second lot of baking was a batch of cupcakes to take to a family gathering for Easter Sunday. I used my ‘Easy Peasy Chocolate Cake’ recipe from an earlier post and put the mixture into the gorgeous cupcake papers Melissa got me for Christmas.

Yum!

Yummier!

To ice I used a simple butter cream recipe and added pink colouring, and a Wilton 1M tip in a large disposable icing bag to get that pattern.

Check out those cute Easter Egg  sprinkles !

But they still looked like they were missing something…

Adorable chocolate bunnies = Perfect!

I made the chocolate bunnies by melting some chocolate buttons and placing it in a mould I picked up at Spotlight.

HAPPY EASTER EVERYONE!