I love an excuse to bake and Easter is the perfect one.
Also, I can now eat chocolate again as I gave it up on the 8th of Jan until Good Friday! Horray.
So, here are two Easter bakes that I have made this Easter weekend.
They are super easy, relatively quick and even child friendly.
Let’s take a look!
Chocolate Easter Nests
Chocolate Easter Nests
I surely don’t even need to include a recipe for this Easter classic!?!
This Easter season special is great to do with kids and one of my favourite ‘cakes’ whenever I seem them on sale.
I had to use shredded wheat this time as we already had it in the cupboard but my preference is cornflakes, and of course I used Cadbury chocolate and mini eggs.
Cadbury Creme Egg Brownies
Cadbury Creme Egg BrowniesGooey goodness!
These brownies came out super gooey and were so delicious, especially warm!
I had this ‘Brownie in a jar’ mix from Christmas, that I hadn’t used yet and all you needed to do was add 125g of butter and 2 eggs (whisked together first). Super easy!
I then cut the creme eggs in half and pushed them into the batter, fondant side up.
A brownie recipe that I use alot is a BBC Good Good one, I’ll leave a link here .
I used to share snap shots of my life on her, things we had done to celebrate different occasions, fun days out, holidays, however, obviously this last year has been quite an unpresidented one.
I feel like I haven’t really shared much of what I have been doing because really we’ve all been doing the same haven’t we! Staying home, Locked down, on and off since Summer, working and just trying to stay safe.
But I thought to myself, why not share the celebrations we are still having, as wierd as they may seem in comparison to how it used to be, because it’s all we’ve got at the moment and we should still be grateful for what we can do during such a mad time.
Today is Mothers day and I have shared on here, for several years, our tradition of our Mothers Day, homemade afternoon tea.
This year was a very 2020/21 affair, via Skype, but it still involved Afternoon Tea so no complaints here.
We ordered the individual Afternoon Teas from a small local business (All Covid safe) and enjoyed them at our own homes via Skype.
They were delicious and it was nice to be able to continue the tradition, even if it was a little different to usual.
Most of our ‘Usuals’ seem a distant memory right now don’t they 😣 but, it’s also so important to embrace what we can do, communicate and spend time together however we can, whilst staying safe, because we can still stay in touch and stay connected, and we will all be back together properly one day.
It gets to everybody at some point, this wierd time we are a part of, but I’m so very conscious that there are people in such a worse situation than me, who have experienced some of the worst times during this pandemic.
If the worst part of this whole situation, for me is that I can only speak to people through a computer then I’ll be forever grateful. I know some people have it much worse.
It’s still ok to find it hard though and I hope you’ve had a little bit of light and joy come your way today!
Thick, fluffy, American style pancakes. Draped in Bananas and Biscoff spread.I’ve never been able to make these thicker, fluffy pancakes before so I was so happy with this delicious stack!!Savoury Ham & Cheese filled pancake toastie.This was so delicious and I was pleasantly suprised with this one.Traditional, thin crepe style pancakes. I always have these ones every year.Lemon, sugar & golden syrup.
As I said a few days ago, I have one more recipe for you! And it’s perfect for a special Christmas day occasion.
It’s a delicious, and relatively easy and quick, Salted caramel (do I need to say any more?) and chocolate tart.
It doesn’t require a lot of ingredients which is great! And apart from time for it to set it doesn’t take too long either. It only took me an hour or so one evening so its great as a fancy, last minute showstopper.
Don’t let the making caramel stage scare you… it’s not as horrendous as you’d think and, if you have a food thermometer this will really come in handy.
I will link both of the recipes that I used below.
I used pre made shortcrust. Remember to bake it blind for 15 mins before removing the baking parchment and beans (or whatever you have, I used dried pasta) pop it back in until it starts to turn golden.
I had some nice flakey salt that I added during the caramel recipe process (as stated but I doubled it) and I sprinkled more salt on, generously, once I had poured the caramel into my cooled tart.
Leave the caramel to set and then add your silky smooth ganache on top. Good quality Dark chocolate is the best.
As someone who likes baking, I enjoyed this recipe because it uses lots of different techniques that perhaps I wouldn’t bother to try usually.
And it looks impressive too!
This is going to be our Christmas day dessert, served with some thick double cream, YUM!
Especially because I feel like I haven’t done enough of these this Blogmas!
I do have another recipe up my sleeve, that I am hoping to make for our Christmas day dessert, so keep your eyes peeled for that one too 👀
Chocolate Orange is one of my absolute favourite flavours ever, but I also think its quite festive too.
I used a ‘Tasty’ recipe this time which I will leave a link for here
I obviously adapted it to make them Chocolate Orange flavoured.
I added some cocoa powder to make the cookie batter chocolatey, a little orange extract instead of vanilla and I used chopped up Chocolate Orange segments, instead of choc chips.
These don’t take long to make, honestly the longest part is refrigerating the mixture for a minimum of 30 mins before baking. They only take 15 mins in the oven.
This is how they turned out. The chocolate orange pieces were all gooey 😍
During December, me and my friend at work have been trying out different mince pies. We work together two days so on a Monday I would bring one in and on a Thursday she would bring one in.
We got to try six different mince pies during this time, and we rated them to see which ones we preferred.
We tried the following Mince Pies:
Aldi Specially Selected
Gregg’s Bakery
Sainsburys Shortcrust Bakery
M&S Puff Pastry
Waitrose Extra Special
Co op Locally Sourced
• The Rankings •
We went for a few categories to score each mince pie on, these were:
Appearance
Overall Taste
Pastry
Fillage
And then we gave them an overall taste each.
• The Results •
Aldi Specially Selected
Appearence: 9/10 & 8/10
Overall taste: 7/10 & 7/10
Pastry: 7/10 & 7/10
Fillage: 8/10 & 7/10
Overall Rating: 7/10 & 7/10
Gregg’s
Appearance: 8/10 & 8/10
Overall taste: 5/10 & 7/10
Pastry: 6/10 & 7/10
Fillage: 8/10 & 7/10
Overall rating: 5/10 & 6/10
Sainsburys Bakery
Appearence: 8/10 & 8/10
Overall taste: 8/10 & 8/10
Pastry: 9/10 & 9/10
Fillage: 5/10 & 5/10
Overall rating: 8.5/10 & 9/10
M&S Puff Pastry
Appearence: 6/10 & 6/10
Overall taste: 6.5/10 & 8/10
Pastry: 5/10 & 3/10
Fillage: 3/10 & 3/10
Overall rating: 6/10 & 7/10
Waitrose
Appearence: 8/10 & 8/10
Overall taste: 9/10 & 6/10
Pastry: 8.5/10 & 8/10
Fillage: 8/10 & 8/10
Overall rating: 8/10 & 8/10
Co-op Locally Sourced
Appearence: 6/10 & 6/10
Overall taste: 10/10 & 10/10
Pastry: 8/10 & 9/10
Fillage: 10/10 & 9/10
Overall rating: 9.5/10 & 9/10
So, the winner of our taste testing was… (drum roll please)
The Co-op Locally Sourced !
These are my favourite and even with trying others that hasn’t changed, and my friend agreed too.
I LOVE festive food (& food in general) and Christmas is one of those times of year where we indulge a little more, enjoy a few of our favourite snacks and have a nice time.
… I like having some of these, particularly, at Christmas as they make me feel super festive, but obviously alot of them can be had at other times of the year!
Here are some of my favourites…
A absolute festive staple.
This is one of my favourite chocolates. I would of course eat this at other times of the year but, I often just get the grab bags or bars, saving the actual chocolate orange for christmas time.
It always feels so festive, perhaps it’s the Christmas/clementine similarity.
And thanks to old Saint Nick, I always get one in my stocking.
Now I do only eat these ones at Christmas! Mince pies.
These are a treat that I have started to like only over the last five years or so, and I love them throughout November and December.
Me and my work friend did a mince pie taste testing this year so look out for that in a Blogmas post to come.
Shortbread is my favourite type of biscuit and I LOVE them at Christmas. I especially love the M&S Christmas, musical tins. These little packs of Chritmas trees are delish too.
Tesco’s Christmas shortbread selection tins are my favourite in terms of taste, super delicious and with lots of sugar on top.
PRINGLES! The ultimate crisps.
I try not to eat tooooo many because they really are addictive!! So I always get these for Christmas as they are a buffet essential 👌🏻
Sour Cream and Chive are my absolute fave.
Hot Chocolate is a Christmas must have!
Perfect for the cold weather and these are a couple of my favourites.
I recently discovered the Cadbury hot chocolate and how good it is. I’m sure I’ve tried it before but not made it well, because I can’t get enough of it now!! I was definatly making it wrong Haha.
Mint hot chocolate is my favourite flavour and there is something about the minty taste that makes me feel super festive.
Hot chocolates are so cosy 🥰
Crackers & cheese are a Christmas must have. Great as a little snack or part of an epic buffet.
& finally…
Our tipple of choice!
It’s got to be a nice, ice cold fruit cidar. I don’t really drink casually, but I do love to have a few of these in the fridge, ready for the festive period 🎄
It’s one of the times of year that I do actually fancy a casual one here and there.
Roseanne Byford 