Hot Cross Buns

Recipe for Hot Cross Buns

Hot Cross Buns:
3/4 cup warm water
1 T yeast
3 T butter, softened
1/4 cup white sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1 egg
1 egg white
1 egg yoke
3 cups flour
2 T water
3/4 cup dried currants (optional)



Unbaked buns with piping, raisin, & egg glaze, just prior to baking.

Decorative Cross
1/2 cup flour
1/2 cup powdered sugar
dash vanilla
1/4 cup milk or enough for piping consistency

Directions:
Combine warm water and yeast and let rest for 10 minutes.

In mixer bowl, combine white sugar, salt, butter, egg, egg white, and half of flour.  Add yeast mixture and rest of flour.  Add currants if desired.  Knead dough.  Place on floured surface and let rest 10 minutes.

Shape into balls and arrange on greased pans.  Cover and raise in warm place until doubled (40 minutes). 

Combine ingredients for Decorative Cross.  Place in piping bag and pipe cross shape on buns. 

If desired, add part of a currant or raisin to center of cross design.

Combine the egg yoke and 2T water and glaze buns.

Bake at 375 degrees for 10-20 minutes.

 

 

 

 

Easter Bunny Books

Easter Bunny Books from Generations Past 



Liliana sets up her "Easter parade for Ann Eliza" based on Lois Lenski's The Easter Rabbit's Parade

 

      Usually I eagerly tote the dozen or more holiday picture books for that month's holiday up from the basement toy room at the start of a new month, but this Easter I sort of dragged my feet on it and thought maybe I'd wait until next year for the Easter Bunny books.  Why?  Well, while my Easter books are lovely gems, they tend to be old, out-of-print books which, while beautifully illustrated and charming, they also tend to be long and verbacious and I wasn't convinced that my 1 and 3-year-old had the patience to sit through them.  Plus, their from-another-generation stories tend to include parts I would not personally have written into a sweet children's book.  For example in Lois Lenski's (most famous for her Cowboy Small and other "Small" books) The Easter Rabbit's Parade, the Rabbit is not all-sweet and Eastery but seems to stem from the wily rabbits in the old trickster tales of yore.  Also, the character, Greybeard the Goat, is always bleating contrary statements in bold lettering throughout the book.   So, it was with trepidation and reluctance that I unearthed the Easter books a little over a week ago.
       Let's just say I should never underestimate children.  And also that unusual/undesirable character traits are not necessarily a hindrance to good storytelling, in fact,  Liliana's favorite Easter book is probably the long The Easter Rabbit's Parade! and Greybeard the Goat?  Well, she laughs non-stop at all his interjections (especially when I use a different voice for them).  And the Easter Rabbit is not necessarily the hero of the book since he's a bit vain and cocky, but the story itself is one of selfless sweetness where the barnyard animals decide to "make Easter for Ann Eliza," the little girl in the story.  Each animal gives up something (feathers, eggs) or makes something (a basket, etc) to surprise Ann Eliza on Easter morning with an Easter Parade (the parade of barnyard animals bringing her an overflowing Easter basket).  The illustrations are splendid, some of my favorite.  Liliana is so taken with the book !  And yes, I do skip over a couple places in the book (when the Easter rabbit has his comeuppance for his vanity due to purple egg dye splattering over his face, the other animals call him "Freckleface" and although it's satisfying in a story way, I don't like Liliana hearing any making fun of people [or animals] so I skip that for now).  And my happy reward for bringing out the old gems?  Liliana is so taken with The Easter Rabbit's Parade that she regularly uses her Holztiger wooden figures to set up the Easter parade and act out the story. 
      

Some of our favorite old Easter Bunny gems:

The Country Bunny and the Little Gold Shoes by Du Bose Heyward (another one of Liliana's favorites--and such sweet illustrations of children bunnies!)
The Easter Egg Artists by Adrienne Adams
The Easter Rabbit's Parade by Lois Lenski
The Egg Tree by Katherine Milhous (a Pennsylvania Dutch book with the German Easter egg tree complete with traditional designs; seem open in one of the photos above)
The Golden Egg Book  by Margaret Wise Brown
Grandpa Bunny Bunny by Jane Warner (this is an all-time favorite book from childhood where bunnies paint everything from shadows to brilliant sunsets)
Happy Easter by Kurt Wiese (a short sweet book about hatching colored chickens--and the rabbits have their baskets strapped to the backs which I adore)
Two Hundred Rabbits by Lonzo Anderson and Adrienne Adams (not actually an Easter book but a bunny book)

 

 

PS.  We like these books too, and no Easter rabbits seen here!:

 

Easter Eggs made with Onion Skin Dye & Flowers

Easter Eggs Wrapped in Flowers

and Cooked in Onion Skin Dye

Top left: Carnation wrapped; Top right: Fern; Bottom left: Baby's Breath; Bottom right: Daisy



Egg wrapped in Baby's Breath

       After wrapping cut flowers (carnation, daisy, baby's breath, and fern) around a raw egg (using quilting thread), I placed the wrapped eggs in a pan and covered them with the onions skin dye (the outside skin of two onions that had been boiled about 20 minutes) that I had previously used for dying eggs with leaves yesterday (click here for that post).  I then boiled them for at least forty minutes (and I'm surprised that my eggs didn't crack because they were only supposed to cook for twenty minutes but yes, I forgot about them!)  The result was much darker than the eggs from yesterday.  This is such fun!

 

 

Onion Skin Egg Dye with Leaf Patterns

Onion Skin Easter Egg Dye with Leaf Patterns

 

Center egg was dyed with onion skin dye.

 

       This week, while dying Easter eggs at my Mom's house, I decided to try a dye technique that I read about in one of Liliana's Easter books: Onion Skin Dye. Liliana helped me peel the skin off of two onions and place them in a saucepan. Then I added water and boiled it for a while. (The original directions called for boiling the eggs in the dye combo for 20 minutes but our eggs were happily already pre-boiled by Grandma before we arrived so I simply let the onion skins simmer for about 20 minutes with no eggs in it). 

       Since there were no live leafy plants anywhere in the snowy outdoors (at least that weren't frozen and crunchy!), I used some branches from my Mom's houseplants, wet them, wrapped them around the eggs, tied them to the egg with some string, then set them in the onion skin dye.  The eggs soaked for about 3-4 hours, then Liliana and I removed the leaves to find some fun textures.  Such a pretty hue, reminiscent of freshly-laid Barred rock chicken eggs and with such an interesting yet subtle texture because of the leaves. 
       This technique would be fun to use some year when we have a later Easter with some green plants outside so that the girls would have the fun of scavenging for leaves as part of the process.  This was so simple to do, that I'd love to try some other natural dyes while making Easter eggs!

Springtime Easter Fruit Cups

A Healthy Fruit Treat for a Happy Easter

 

        Part of our "Healthy Easter Treat" for the girls' Easter party at Tiny Tots playgroup preschool was a medly of watermelon and cantalope cut into Easter shapes (a chick, a cross, a tulip, and a butterfly), then set in a spingtime cupcake paper (which I had lined with a flower-shaped foil cut-out so that the fruit juice wouldn't soak the paper).  It was a bit tricky to cut the fruit into layers conducive to cutting out shapes (but the only real "tricky" part was trying not to have a ton of scrap left over).  The rest was super easy because cookie cutters cut through melon quite well and my girls had such fun nibbling on the excess. 
       Luckily, the night I worked on their Easter treats coincided with their Tuesday night playtime/Spanish exposure with my dear cousin Rachel so I was able to work with less distractions (you know, those fun everyday interruptions like diaper changes, the "I'm thirsty"s, etc which seem to add an extra hour to every project attempted!).  I am so thankful that my girls have the opportunity to play with 25 children each Wednesday morning, that they have such a wonderful teacher, and that I, too, have the chance to visit with highschool classmates of yore!  Life is such fun these days!

Easter Bunny Snack

Healthy Snack: Easter Rabbit Treat

 

       While perusing Pinterest for springtime heathy snacks,  I noticed that using a cookie cutter to create an Easter rabbit shape out of bread could be lots of fun for my girls to eat and "simple" to make.  I hoped to embellish the Easter bunny's face with carrot whiskers, raison eyes and nose, and cheese ears (using a miniature egg cookie cutter to cut out the cheese). 
       The finished product looked more like a mouse than a rabbit to me, but maybe I just stared at whole-wheat veggie rabbits for too many hours.  By the time I was done creating 25 Easter bunnies, too many hours had elapsed for me to think that they looked anything but rediculous and also they started to seem like a bit too elaborate to be worth it (although I did remind myself that I had once made my nephew Darius an entire two-foot wide pirate ship complete with a hand-carved cheese treasure chest with blueberries inside for his own one-person daycare snack so at least it wasn't as over-the-top as that!) 
       Part of what ended up making it take so long was realizing that I needed to cover each rabbit with damp papertowel so that the bread and cheese wouldn't dry out before we arrived at the party--and they still were nice and moist the next day but the stiff decorative cupcake holders did mishapen a bit from the dampness.  All in all, I think they turned out fine but if I did it again, I think I would do it for a smaller group so I didn't have to create quite so many--or at least I would buy grated carrot so there wouldn't be so much chopping.  Although, that said, I'd probably make them again next week if my girls wanted them :)  

Easter Sprinkle Pretzels

Pretzel Rods dipped in Sprinkles

 

        As Liliana and Vera Rose's church Easter program and party approached, we all eagerly awaited the fun. We practiced the songs daily until the final Saturday practice and party were upon us. What should we bring to share as a treat for the other boys and girls? I finally decided upon plain old pretzel rods (which Liliana erroneously calls "curtain rods"), decorated a bit with a dip of white chocolate and Easter sprinkles. They weren't super sweet, nor were they complicated and Liliana was able to help sprinkle the sprinkles. I melted Wilton's white chocolate melts, used a spoon to cover just the tip and part of the end of a pretzel rod, then held the pretzel over a mug on a tray as Liliana poured the sprinkles (the mug allowed us to continually reuse the fallen sprinkles) and then we arranged them in a bunch of mugs, sprinkled-tip up until they cooled/dried. It took longer than I expected but it was so worth it when Liliana was able to give them out to her Sunday School friends and when I saw even the older kids happily debating which color they wanted.

        It was a fun practice, a great party, and an even better performance last Sunday as I silently laughed until tears rolled down my cheeks as I watched the antics of a 3-year-old on stage for an hour of sweetly singing (plus some jumping, exploring, twirling and meandering around the stage--yes, my little girl was the most active of the not-intended-to-be-active program).  I am so glad that Christ is alive so that all the children may have a personal Savior to rejoice in this Easter. 

 

Tissue Crosses

Vera's cross on left; Liliana's is on the right.

       Last week at the girls' Tiny Tots playgroup/preschool, Liliana and Vera Rose created these two crosses decorated with tissue paper.  I adore the difference in their finished product, both due to their age (a 1-year-old's skill level definitely varies from a 3-year-old's) and due to their own unique personality/creativity.  I just love both and am so thankful that my highschool classmate, Molly, had them create these crosses.  I so enjoyed watching Vera Rose slap on her pink tissue, then take off to play with dollies while Liliana carefully concentrated on crumpling/rolling her tissue pieces and painstakingly glued them onto her cross, one by one.  After fifteen minutes all the children had finished and left the table to play except Liliana who sat at the table for at least 10 minutes more, fully focused on her art--and probably would have continued working if we hadn't finally replaced her project with her snack.

Paper Egg Hunts

Paper Egg Hunts

       When I was little, one of my favorite activities was creating my very own Easter egg hunts, made with pencils, crayons, and paper.  I would draw an outdoor scene and add lots of little Easter eggs.  Next, I would use an additional piece of paper to draw extra bushes, flowers, and animals which I would then cut out and tape over the egg drawings so that the eggs were hidden until you lifted the flap of paper.  I usually made lots of flaps with no eggs under it, too.  I had such fun "searching" for the Easter eggs and letting my siblings use them, too.  This year, Liliana and I watercolored one, but she was super into using black watercolor at the moment we made it, so I mostly painted it.  Liliana is having such fun lifting the flaps and I look forward to when she'll be old enough to make her own.