Easter

I know Easter was nearly a whole week ago now but I still have the remnants in my kitchen waiting to be consumed!

I couldn't afford chocolate eggs for everyone so I knitted little chicks from a Jean Greenhowe pattern I spotted on Ravelry which can be found here and brought some creme eggs to sit inside them. I didn't have and googly eyes so just had to stitch some on but I think they still look pretty cute. And they decorated the table nicely.

I also decided to try my hand at some proper easter baking. I picked up Paul Hollywoods 'How to Bake' a month or so ago and decided to make Hot Cross buns and Simnel cake using his recipes in the book. And then luckily both were made on the Great British Bake off easter special so I got some extra tips on how to knead the dough etc! I haven't made bread since school (except in a bread maker) so was really pleased with how these turned out- they look like actual Hot Cross buns that you would buy in a shop and tasted better I'd say!!

And my simnel cake (although never really tasted one before) also tasted very yummy! But I love marzipan so it wouldn't take much to please me! I even made the marzipan myself- I thought it would be so tricky and thats why people just buy it but it really wasn't and took less time to make than it would to drive to the shops and buy a block.

A very nice easter all round made even better by the fact that I had Easter Monday off work!! I am going to make it a tradition to make hot cross buns every year now I think and I enjoyed making them a lot so will try out different breads between now and then.

Hope you all had a lovely easter and did anyone craft or bake things?

An Easter Cake

Good Friday has started off well so far. I had hot cross buns for breakfast and fish for lunch. It is also the first day of 3 days I have off for Easter.

This week I have baked an Easter cake. It was a bag of dry ingredients that I got from Sainsburys after Christmas for about £2 including the marzipan and icing- AMAZING!

These are the bags of ingredients:

The bags have all the dry ingredients you need all measured out in little bags. It was very easy to make.

Here is the mix ready in the tin

And all wrapped up ready to go in the oven

It took 3 and a half hours to cook in the oven, the longest I have ever had to bake a cake for. And I was a bit worried it was being burnt to a crisp in there.

The top turned out fine but the edges were a bit darker than the rest. Which is where mum chipped in to say a should have put paper around the edge aswell to stop it cooking too quickly- which is great after it has been cooked!

After the burnt cake had cooled overnight it was time to decorate it. The decorating bag had everything in it including apricot jam to help the marzipan stick to the cake. It also had 3 different sized stars but I found an chick one in the drawer that I thought would be more Eastery. I rolled ou the icing and marzipan thinner that it said because mum doesn't like it that much. Unfortunately this meant that there was a leftover ball of marzipan and icing which I had to eat- such a tough life!

Here is the decorated cake:

I hope everyone had a good Easter. We are still eating the cake and I am informed that it doesn't taste burnt!

Xxx