Bake Your Own Easter Treats

It’s easy to buy a manufactured, mass-produced Easter egg to gift to someone, but if you’re looking to add the personal touch, there are baking options that you can try. The below method will produce small Easter egg basket cakes; they are both quick and easy to make, while being absolutely delicious for anyone who has the pleasure of eating them!

- Egg baskets.

You will need:

- Cornflakes or other similar cereal.
- Small Easter eggs, such as Mini Eggs or those found in slot machines outside of grocery stores.
- Several large bars of milk chocolate

Optional extras:

- Sprinkles / hundreds and thousands
- Whipped cream
- Syrup

To make:

- Melt the chocolate in a sauce pan. This may take awhile, so if you’re short on time you can add small amounts of milk. Stir until the chocolate is thicky, creamy and most definitely a liquid.

- Keeping the chocolate on the heat, add in your chosen cereal. Quickly stir the cereal in to the chocolate, so the cereal is coated in the chocolate mix. It’s important to do this as quickly as possible, and remove from the heat when the cereal and the chocolate are thoroughly mixed together.

- Remove from the heat and allow the chocolate to cool slightly for one to two minutes.

- Use a tablespoon to separate the chocolate-covered cereal in to small “basket” shaped round shapes. Create a small indentation in the centre of each “basket”. Place each basket on a separate tray and refrigerate for two hours.

- When solid, remove the baskets and place one egg in the centre of the basket. You can also add the whipped cream, syrup or sprinkles at this point if you have chosen to use them.

- Serve and enjoy!

Plan The Perfect Easter Egg Hunt

One of the enduring traditions of Easter is the Easter egg hunt, ostensibly where young children hunt around their homes and gardens in search of gifts left by the Easter Bunny. If you’re planning on playing the role of the Easter Bunny and setting up an Easter egg hunt for your children, here’s a few tips to make it go with a bang:

- Choose your hiding places depending on the age of your children.

The younger children are, the less patience they will have when it comes to an Easter egg hunt. If you’re children are under the age of eight, keep your hunt short and relatively easy to complete. Leave some of the eggs or chocolate a little bit on show – so it’s easy to spot and easy to find.

If your children are older than eight, you can be a little more adventurous.

- Try clues.

While most Easter egg hunts usually just involve children running around to try and find eggs without much direction, you can always try a clue-driven Easter egg hunt. This works particularly well if you want the fun of a hunt without the expense of buying a lot of chocolate eggs: start with one clue, which leads to the next clue and so on, and at the final location your children find their chocolate Easter gifts.

-  Think like a child.

When placing the eggs for children to find, try and step in to your child’s mindset: where would they look for clues, where is convenient? Also remember to keep things at the relevant eye height for a child, as any gifts that are too high may go unnoticed.

Easter In The Catholic World

For many Roman Catholics, Easter is a more important celebration than Christmas in the religious calendar due to what it symbolizes to adherents of the religion. In this respect, there is a large amount of time and effort devoted to celebrating the festival, beginning in earnest on Good Friday and reaching its conclusion on Easter Sunday – marking the days from Jesus’ crucifixion to his Resurrection. There are certain traditions which are held to in Catholic countries, and in Catholic churches within other countries.

Among the major elements of the Catholic celebration of Easter is the Passion play, which marks out the passage from Jesus’ arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane to his crucifixion and eventually the Resurrection. A particularly famous Passion play takes place annually in the German village of Oberammergau, where approximately two thousand local residents take part in the story. Visitors come from all over the world to see the Oberammergau Passion play.

Other important traditions of the Catholic celebration of Easter include the lighting of the Paschal candle on Easter Saturday at the Easter Vigil mass. Prior to the lighting of the candle, all lights in the church are extinguished on Holy Thursday (sometimes known as Maundy Thursday) and kept dark until the lighting of the candle. This is to symbolise the light of Christ, lost on Good Friday when he died on the cross. The Paschal candle is then carried into the church to commence the Easter Vigil. It is raised three times by the priest, who says “The Light of Christ” each time to which the congregation respond “Thanks Be To God”.

Easter Crafts: Card Making

For most people, there are two times in the year when you would send a card to someone: on their birthday, and at Christmas. However, if you enjoy card-making to the point where you are looking for any excuse to put your crafting skills to use, why not capitalize on the much-celebrated holiday of Easter as another opportunity to produce your own hand made cards?

Easter cards can be extremely good fun to make. Firstly, Easter is the colour of spring, so its associated colors are bright and fun to work with. Aim for cheerful, happy colours such as yellows, greens and whites – all coming together to create something that reflects the coming of a new season. If you prefer working with pastels, light blues and pinks also work well with Easter cards.

Secondly, young animals are often associated with the holiday, giving you ample opportunity to decorate your cards with adorable images of young calves, lambs and the quintessentially Easter animal, the chick. You can be traditional and feature the young animal in a pose reminiscent of them breaking free from an egg, to signify the beginning of new life and the new earthly season. Or add a modern twist with a barnyard scene, or perhaps even young farmyard animals competing in an Easter egg hunt.

Whatever you decide, aim for light, breezy and happy. Cheerful colors to reflect the coming of a new season. It isn’t possible to go overboard on fun additions to an Easter card, so go crazy with the ribbons and glitter on this one – anything that evokes a sense of fun will definitely raise a smile come Easter morning.