Easter 2019

This Easter I baked the frosted white chocolate Easter cake that I made for the last couple of years. (I've made it 3 times altogether now, first time was Easter 2013). It's a Madeira style cake with white chocolate in the sponge and cream cheese frosting. The recipe is by British chef James Martin. For more on the cake and the recipe link, visit this post: https://livingseasonal.blogspot.com/2017/04/frosted-white-chocolate-easter-cake.html

I made it on Saturday and had a piece, although the frosting hadn't properly set, lol. I think it tasted better the next day (Easter Sunday), the flavour had come out more as well.  Here's a pic:

It tastes nice. It's decorated with Cadbury's Mini Eggs, or you can choose what to put on it (or just have it plain if you prefer). :) I think Maltesers would work well, like with the white chocolate Malteser cake I made for Oestara last year. (I put both Mini Eggs and Maltesers on top). I keep it in the fridge, but you can also wrap it in clingfilm and foil and freeze it.

See last year's cake here: https://livingseasonal.blogspot.com/2018/04/easter-2018.html


I also had another go at egg dyeing. It's been a bit hit and miss in the past. I first tried it at Easter 2015 with coffee for a brown egg and beetroot for a pink one. The coffee didn't work that well, but the beetroot worked better. I also had a go for Oestara 2018  and didn't get that good a result, but  it was better when I tried again last Easter.

This year I used two different recipes, one that worked better last Easter which was part of a free email course from Witch of Lupine Hollow  about celebrating the sabbats.That one is where you boil beetroot in water and add vinegar to get a natural dye. I don't think it's on her site, but here's a similar recipe I linked to last year: https://www.seriouseats.com/2010/04/how-to-dye-easter-eggs-naturally-without-a-box-onion-skins-beets-cabbage.html

I also looked at this post: https://www.britmums.com/arts-crafts-naturally-dyed-eggs/

And the other recipe was with red food colouring. Find it here (it doesn't link directly but it's on the same page as other Ostara posts https://witchesofthecraft.com/category/the-sabbats/

The natural dye turned the egg browny and the food colouring turned the other black! It could be because I used brown eggs. It works best with white but had a hard time finding some. Also some of the recipes specify white vinegar and I thought had some in but couldn't find it yesterday, so used malt instead. Here's a photo of the brown one:

Sorry it's a bit dark!

It looks kind of like the brown eggs on this page: https://abeautifulmess.com/2018/03/naturally-dyed-easter-eggs.html

Hope you had a nice Easter, are having a good Passover if you celebrate that or good weekend in general. :) This year I got a Terry's Chocolate Orange egg again, a Cadbury's and a couple of others! The weather has been hot over Easter (up to 25 degrees Celsius/50F although today's it's about 18C (65F) in Sussex) and lots of people have been out enjoying the sun. Here's a picture from Worthing Beach today:

Happy Easter Monday! :)