Saturday, April 03, 2010

Holiday Treat Ideas

If you want to get some healthier treats into your children's Easter baskets this year, check out Caeli Esser's article Easter Bunnies do not eat Snickers.

An Easter egg hunt is always fun, even when the kids are supposedly too old for them (mine aren't.) Some tips: don't use real eggs unless you're hiding them outdoors, or count the eggs before you hide them indoors; have extra empty baskets to hand out to your hunters in case someone falls on their basket or a handle breaks; if you have kids who race around and snatch eggs from other kids, fine them 2 eggs or make them sit out for two minutes (this also trains them to be good sports), and have a special secret prize for the youngest kid and/or whoever finds the fewest eggs (I always gave the slowest hunter the much-coveted golden egg.)

A lot of moms like to make Jell-O Jigglers as treats for the kids, but if you use the egg molds Jell-O sells they can be too big and slippery for little hands to hold. I used to make half-eggs by pouring the gelatin into a deviled egg dish like this one (lightly spray first with PAM or cooking oil spray) and served them on a bed of coconut tinted green with food coloring.

Absolutely the cutest and easiest decorated Easter cupcakes to make (this would be great to have the kids decorate, too): Chick and Egg cupcakes.

For Easter dessert this year I'm going to try a spin on an old favorite of my childhood: coconut cake. Cooking Light's recipe for Double Coconut Cake is lighter than my grandmother's egg- and butter-heavy recipe, so I'm going to give that a try. I like the commenter who mentioned adding crushed pineapple as filling to give it more of a tropical flavor; I might do a variation on that with fresh peaches.

If you're not a fan of coconut, Cooking Light also has a recipe for what sounds like a really scrumptious Chocolate Cake Roll. For those of you who are already celebrating Passover, check out this reipe for Pistachio Pavlovas with Lemon Curd and Berries.

4 comments:

  1. When I was a wee muppet, the big thing was to gather at Oma and Opa's large house, and we'd ALL huddle upstairs, NO PEEKING! as Opa'd hide hundreds of tiny foil wrapped choc eggs in the main room.

    Sometimes a little too well, we'd find them 6 months later on a return visit.

    It's one of the few, and happy memories of my Opa that I have, but it was hilarity for everyone with the more creative family members having rigged their own egg collection mechanisms and containers.

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  2. I'm so trying that coconut cake recipe! I have fresh strawberries and was thinking of making a pound cake kind of thing to put them on. We're doing a plastic egg hunt, it's just simpler than dealing with real eggs in 80 degree weather.

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  3. Those are some great ideas! :) I am indeed to old for easter egg hunts, but I used to love them as a kid!

    Jell-O Jigglers is still delish, though. :D The coconut nest is a cute idea!

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