Oestara 2018

Last Tuesday was Oestara aka Ostara and the Spring Equinox. As I mentioned in my Celebrating Oestara and Spring post I baked a white chocolate Malteser cake. Here's the recipe: https://goodfood.uktv.co.uk/recipe/white-chocolate-malteser-cake/

Update 13/3/22: The Good Food site is now gone but here is a recipe that I think is quite similar (although it has malted milk powder, not drinking chocolate and the one I made didn't have any rum in!): https://www.deliciousmagazine.co.uk/recipes/chocolate-and-malteser-cake/

I couldn't find white Maltesers so I just used ordinary ones for the top of the cake. I put Cadbury Mini Eggs on top as well. The recipe requires Malteser drinking chocolate, so I put in two 50g sachets and I used Tesco white chocolate for the icing. It came out quite nice. Here's a picture:

The drinking chocolate made a darker, different tasting sponge than some cakes. It was a nice taste. I took a picture of it when it was cut. It came out blurry but you can see the sponge:

Other things I did for Oestara were watch Tess Whitehurst's Instant Ostara Spell for Peace and Joy video (from last year) and take pictures of the sunset. I took this photo on Oestara itself:

There wasn't as much of a "dramatic" sunset but the next day I took some sunset pics on Lancing Beach. Here are a couple:

I did have a go at egg dyeing as well; first I dyed an egg in coffee, then a beetroot/white vinegar mix, but it didn't come out that well! I might have another go at Easter.

So now it's officially spring! The weather has warmed up here in Sussex in the past couple of days but nights are still chilly, and snow is forecast again for Easter weekend (Easter Sunday is 1st April this year). The atmosphere has been feeling a bit lighter for me and since the clocks went forward last night (or early this morning technically) we're getting longer days now. Sunset is now around 7.20 pm. I've enjoyed seeing daffodils and I'm just starting to see blossom trees. Hopefully more warmer weather is on its way soon!

For more spring celebration ideas, click the linked post at the top of the page or go here: https://livingseasonal.blogspot.com/2018/03/celebrating-oestara-spring.html
 

Happy Oestara and/or Happy Spring! (And Happy Madron and/or Autumn to those in the Southern Hemipshere!). :)