Easter

The Cookies:

I saw the cutest little bunny cookies and just had to make them! I found them at Created by Diane

I have a really good Butter Cookie Recipe I generally like to use, but thought I’d give these Italian cookies a try. I thought they were delicious! So here is the recipe from Created by Diane.

The bunny noses I found at Munchkin Munchies.

She made a template, but I used a heart shaped cookie cutter and cut off the bottom tip to use as the nose, then rounded off the rest of the bottom portion, cut a little notch where I pushed my skewer (because I didn’t have popsicle sticks on hand) in before baking.

Bunny Cookies

Italian Cookie ½ batch recipe

 Bunny Cookies makes approx 4 dozen 2½ inch cookies

Ingredients

• 3 eggs
• ¾ cup butter (melted and cooled)
• 3 cups flour
• ¾ cups sugar
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Instructions

1. Whisk eggs and butter together. In large mixer bowl add flour, sugar, and baking powder, stir well to combine all dry ingredients together. Add the egg mixture to flour mixture along with vanilla. Blend until incorporated.
2. Roll out dough on well floured surface.
3. Use egg cookie cutter (Cut into desired shape.
4. Bake at 350 for 10-12 minutes.
5. You can roll this dough thick or thin. Adjust baking time accordingly.
7. She has a different Icing than what I used. Here is my recipe:

8. Royal Icing:

9. • 16 oz pkg Powdered Sugar (3 1/4 cup)

10. • 2 Tbs Meringue Powder (found in cake decorating supplies in crafts stores)

    •  1/2 tsp Cream of Tartar

    • 1/2 C warm water

11. Combine in large mixing bowl and beat with an electric mixer on low seed until combined; beat on high speed for 7 – 10 minutes or until sugar mixture is very stiff.
    

    Don’t forget to set aside a portion to be dyed pink for the ears, and a smaller portion to be dyed black for the eyes.
    

    This icing will smooth on really smooth and dries hard.

12. Here is the icing recipe found on Created by Diane’s blog:
    • 4 C powdered sugar
    • 4 – 6 Tbs water
    • 1 Tbs corn syrup
    • 1 tsp vanilla extract
    • 4 – 6 drops white Americolor food coloring for white icing, 2 additional drops for the to a portion of the pink (soft pink) and reserve a small amount and tint that black for the eyes.I used the same cookie and icing recipes I used for the bunnies above on my bunny noses (made them at the same time.)

Cherry Chocolate Cheesecake

I found this recipe on Raspberri Cupcakes
Now being located in Australia, she uses the metric system. She does have some measurement in parenthesis for us Americans, but there were a few things I had to guess at.


Chocolate Chip Cherry Cheesecake
(serves 6-8 people, loosely based on this cherry cheesecake recipe by Nigella Lawson)

Crust:
2 cups graham cracker crumbs
1 tbsp sugar
4 tbsp butter, melted

preheat oven to 325°F. Grease a 9″x5″ rectangular loaf pan. Line the base and two long sides of the loaf tin with baking paper leaving some extra baking paper hanging over the edges, this will make it easier to lift the cheesecake out of the tin later. Mix graham cracker crumbs and 1 tbsp sugar together in a medium bowl. Add butter and stir until well combined. Using your hands, spread mixture out in an even layer, then use your fingertips to press crumb mixture into bottom of tin to form an even crust. Transfer to a baking sheet and bake until crust is set and golden in places, 15–20 minutes. Set crust aside until cool.

Cherry Chocolate Cheesecake:
150g cherries (fresh or frozen), pitted and diced (I would guess about 3 lbs of fresh cherries, since they aren’t in season yet I used frozen and just had to guess at how much to use, I believe the bag was 184 grams, so i figured maybe 2/3 of the bag)
1 tbsp sugar
2 tsp lemon juice
1 tbsp cornstarch + 2 tsp cold water
3/4 cup mini dark choc chips (I blitzed my chocolate in the food processor to make the pieces really tiny)
300g cream cheese, softened (I had to guess here too, my package was a 16 oz – I think- so I ended up using 1 and 1/3 packages.)
1/2 cup powdered sugar, sifted
1 tsp pure vanilla extract
250ml thickened cream (I used 1 C of heavy whipping cream)

Chocolate Ganache:
100ml pouring cream (min 35% fat pure unthickened cream) – I used 1/2 C heavy whipping cream
150g dark chocolate (I used about 1/2 C and a handful of dark chocolate chips)
Fresh cherries to decorate (Not in season yet, so I took some frozen ones and rolled in some granulated sugar and put on top)

I found the adorable donut tombstones at Free Fun Easter

Just click on the link and get the instructions, for mine, I used chocolate frosting and mini vanilla wafers as the stone.

For the Dyed Deviled Eggs, I used the instructions found on Real Mom Kitchen

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