Friday 18 March 2016

Home-made creme eggs

On Wednesday, my friend Anna came over for our annual Easter egg day, where we make Easter eggs together.  You can't buy fair trade Easter eggs in New Zealand (except for expensive artisanal ones - even the boring hollow Cadbury eggs don't seem to be on sale this year).  We want Easter eggs to eat and give away, but not at the expense of people being enslaved and abused to make the chocolate, so, for some years now, we've made our own :-)
We've been doing great marshmallow Easter eggs for some years now, but this year I think we've finally nailed how to make creme eggs!

classic vanilla creme eggs

peppermint creme eggs - for variety and to share with vegan friends

and even creme 'egg' bunnies!

If you'd like to make some yourself, here is our recipe.  There are photos of various parts of the process after the written recipe.  It's a bit time-consuming, but none of it is hard.  You'll need chocolate egg molds, a candy/meat thermometer and a good beater for best results, but none of those are strictly necessary.

Friday 11 March 2016

Dinosaur cake

A friend of mine has a wee boy who turns three today.  It's the first birthday he's had where he's really been aware of what it's all about, so his mum wanted to have a proper party for him.  I volunteered to make the cake :-)

I had a blast doing it!  He's really into dinosaurs, and I was delighted to find these very straightforward instructions for making a dinosaur cake.  You make two round cakes, then cut one into an 'n' shape for the legs and body and the other into two hooks to make the head and tail [pdf].

green dinosaur cake on metal tray

I'm really pleased with it!