Easter. Already? Weren't we just serving up our roast Christmas duck (stuffed with veal and wrapped with proscuitto, served with many lovely things, most importantly with a freeflow of DJ Cornflake Mai Tai's...) two or three weeks ago? Err.
While Christmas is really joyful, Easter is often quiet and aptly reflective for us. We have a household tradition of waking up early to bake on long weekends. I do the Australia Day breakfast (fresh damper), we tend to make random baked goods on the Queen's Birthday (like grape bread or the Maloufs' cheesy pull-apart yoghurt bread) and Hubby always does the Good Friday hot cross buns. We've been using a recipe from Taste for years, with minor tweaks and additions on the day. This year we added fruit peel.
We also wanted to see if letting dough rise overnight made a diff. Certainly means you sleep in abit more since the hard work was done last night! Hubby hopped out of bed at 7, cranked up the oven and brought the buns to room temp, snoozed for another 30 minutes and pushed me out of bed before putting the buns into the oven.
As cranky as I was, I still remembered to photograph them before attempting to look human to attend Church. Thankfully, a warm buttered bun later and a big mug of coffee put me in the right frame of mind and we got seats up the back.
Easter thoughts: 1) kaya on a hcb is strange but good 2) I'd never thought about what Simon of Cyrene might've thought about having to carry Jesus' cross for him 3) does coating your currants and fruit peel really help keep the fruit from sinking 4) Judas didn't choose to get a second chance, and contemporary bakers leave him out of the equation (Google Easter cakes and see what I mean, some cakes traditionally only have 11 marzipan eggs on top!)...tsk tsk...
Since Hubby's Parental Units are due back this week, we thought we'd make and Easter Cake and some cookies. I pulled an Earl Grey Tea cookie / shortbread recipe off Nibbledish, but in a pre-coffee haze this morning, couldn't remember what a stick of butter weighs. I called across to Hubby at the computer, asking him to please find out because the bookshelf was "too far away". Tappity tap tap. Mr Engineer over there mumbles "the density of butter is 0.911 g/cm3...therefore 125ml of butter is 113.875 g..." which of course earned him a Wife Look. Yes, knowing the density of butter will come in really handy some day. For example, if anyone offered to drop a cubic meter of butter of me, I could work it out and be able to say "no thanks" with authority...
Whereas if you sneak a look My Way, your favorite search engine may return a chart called "Butter Measurement Translation Chart to Defeat Nefarious Recipe Writers", which has worked it all out for you in a printable little table. Ahem. Next time I'll just walk to the bookshelf, hey?
And Easter Cake! Wow, where do you start? I suppose, being the holiest day of the year for many cultures, it's not surprising how many types of celebratory cakes there are to choose from! We eventually decided on pashka, a Russian style dessert. We didn't start give up the traditional foods for Lent, but now, reading the recipe, I wish we had...I think there's enough dairy in here to cover the last 40 days!! Eggs, ricotta, sour cream, Philly cream cheese...eek..yum...eek...yum...
Well, I'm off to unbag a few packets of Lady Grey...I'm sure that's insufficient calory-burning exercise to warrant even a tablespoon of pashka...nevertheless...
Happy Easter!
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