Happy Easter!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 I love Easter, with its promise of new life; buds emerging on the plants, lambs in the fields, longer days and usually ( but not it seems this year!) the advent of warmer weather.

 

It maybe cold and snowy outside, but in order to make it seem spring-like indoors I have made colourful

bunting and adorned some twigs with 'leaves' after seeing this idea on Pinterest .....

 

 

 

 

 

...and for our Easter breakfast I made a hot cross bun loaf.

 

 

 

 

 

Not, I know, the traditional Easter bun, but this is a loaf I have made for several years now.

The recipe is made with an initial sponge, as below, from flour, yeast,sugar and milk, which is left to froth before adding the rest of the ingredients ...

 

 

 

....which I think makes the finished loaf really light and it makes delicious toast!

 

 

 

And breaking with tradition again, I made some mini simnel cakelets from a River Cottage recipe. Mr digandweed is very partial to fruit cake and marzipan and so am I, but a traditional simnel cake does take quite a long time to make, so should you be feeling rushed and in a hurry, I offer these as a quick, easy alternative ( whilst still delivering the necessary marzipan hit !).

I topped them with glace icing and mini eggs, but you could of course decorate with more marzipan.

The recipe makes 12, but if you eat one before decorating and then put a little marzipan ball on the remaining ones, you can still have the symbolic 11 disciples !

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lastly, a beautiful addition to our Easter decorations arrived in the post yesterday.

 

 

 

 

A lovely handmade Easter card stitched by my talented sister (design needlefelted onto calico)

 

 

 

Happy Easter everyone!