Easter

The Easter bunny has been and gone. For Easter I made chocolate muffins, I wanted them moist so I tweaked my carrot cake recipe. I replaced 2oz (50g) of the plain flour with 2oz (50g) of cocoa powder

INGREDIENTS 

1. 6floz (175ml) corn oil

2. 6oz (150g) caster sugar

3. 3 eggs

4. 1tsp vanilla essence

5. 8oz (200g) carrots

6. 4oz (100g) walnut pieces

7. 4oz (100g) plain flour

8. 2oz (50g) cocoa powder

9. 1tsp bicarbonate of soda

At Christmas Alice bought me a Hornsea Pottery vase, from their 1960's Fauna range 'Daisy jug with rabbits'. Time for it to come into its own, perfect for an Easter display. With this good weather we have been having the garden has exploded with blossom and flowers, not so good for hay fever suffers, but great for taking photographs! I just had to take a photograph of a fully opened tulip and share it, it just looked like the colour had been painted on.

I bought a pack of polystyrene eggs (£1) to decorate for Easter. I used a wooden skewer, stuck through the egg, to make decorating and drying easier but I actually liked the idea of an 'egg on a stick'. To decorate the eggs I used tissue paper and paper napkins, stuck on and coated with a 1:1 ratio PVA and water solution. Once the eggs had dried I removed the skewer and added curled parcel ribbon, holding it in place by pushing the skewer back into the egg. I think the egg picks would be perfect in the garden as markers for an Easter egg hunt or just grouped in a vase.

We had a lovely family Easter, both the children were home plus Bobbin (dog). Alice and I baked, knitted, crocheted, made organza flowers and shopped, a bit of mum and daughter bonding. This is the recipe for the Banana Cake we made for Easter, this recipe is great if you want to use up very ripe bananas. For the topping we melted chocolate then decorated it with chocolate animals and Maltesers.

BANANA CAKE

There's still time to knit these 'Just Hatched' chicks for Easter. The pattern is so easy and takes about 30 minutes to an hour to produce a fluffy bird, to contain a Cadbury's creme egg. My free chick pattern is easy to follow, give it a go!

For this Easter decoration I took the basic Scandinavian woven heart basket pattern and instead of using traditional red and white felt I used felt cleaning cloths, in pastel shades. I decorated the baskets with flowers, made from the same felt, and placed a piece of tissue inside to nestle small eggs in.

You will need: Facecloth, rubber band, ribbon, small amount of white wool and black embroidery thread.

This is a bit like origami with a facecloth. First fold the facecloth in half diagonally.

Tightly roll the facecloth triangle up, start with the pointy corner so that you end up with the long fold at the end of the roll.

Fold the cloth in half.

Fold in half again, this will form the head and ears. Place a rubber band tightly around the cloth about 2/3 of the way down.

Adjust and play with the cloth until you are happy it looks like a rabbit's head.

In Poundland I found some silicone ice cube trays, in the shape of really cute animals. In the pack you get two sets of animals, I chose the ones with ducks, dogs, squirrels and rabbits. I looked at them and thought the moulds would be perfect for chocolate. I melted some chocolate, in the microwave, poured it into the moulds and left to set. Because the moulds are made from silicone it was easy to remove the shapes from the trays. The animals are just the right size to decorate a cupcake or you could use a few of them to decorate a cake.

For this Easter basket I bought a 99p packet of cleaning cloths, the pastel colours are perfect for this Easter project. In The 99p Shop I found a packet of 15 pearlized eggs, they open up, you can put sweets of your choice inside. Alternatively you could put chocolate or decorated eggs in the basket . For the basic basket I found this comprehensive tutorial on Maya Made Maya has made a beautiful basket, I have just tweaked it a bit for this project.