Getting in the Easter mood....

Easter is around the corner and I am already in the Easter mood for couple of weeks now, dreaming about Easter bunnies and what I would like to prepare these days. Traditionally we would have an Easter brunch with family or friends, depending where we are spending the holidays.

Today we have had a pre-easter brunch, with some of our favorite recipes...homemade bagels, Knäckebrot, vanilla sugar cookies and chocolate cupcakes.....

For the cupcakes I used the recipe of our favorite chocolate cake (here) and frosted it with white chocolate butter cream (here). I colored a small part of the frosting with yellow food coloring to make small egg yolk dots on the top of the white frosting.



Vanilla sugar cookies

• 125 g butter softened
• 125 g sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla essence or 2 teaspoons vanilla sugar
• 1 egg yolk
• 250 g flour

Preheat your oven to 180C. Beat the butter with sugar and vanilla till light and fluffy. Add egg yolk and beat again. Sift the flour and add to the butter mixture, knead a ball of dough (if you dough appears to be to dry add 1-2 tablespoons of milk). Put into the refrigerator for 30 minutes. Take the dough out, roll it out and cut as desire with the cookie cutters. Bake for 10-12 minutes, till slightly brown on the edges.

Royal icing

• egg white
• 150-200 g powdered sugar
• lemon juice

In a bowl beat everything together, till well combined and shiny. Add more lemon juice in case the icing is going to be to thick. It should be still bit runny, but not to thick. Color if you desire and decorate the cookie.

It was a lovely brunch, with a bit of a Easter feeling and quite funny photo-shoot...as this time my guys were helping me with the props and ideas----

Enjoy!

P.S. the recipes for Knäckebrot and bagels, will be posted in another post