Fabulous vintage easter hat photo from George Eastman House on Flickr
I hope you have a wonderful Easter weekend with friends and family!
If you have some leftover easter chocolate, why don’t you try making Easter Bunny Blondies?
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In my opinion, if you want to try coloring easter eggs without chemicals, onion skins are the way to go! It’s easy to do, and makes really interesting abstract patterns on the egg shells. Plus, you end up with a bunch pretty hard boiled eggs in your fridge for eating! I first heard about coloring eggs with onion skins from Zak’s mom, who did this as a child in Scotland. In Scottish tradition, you bring decorated hard boiled eggs outside on easter, then roll them down a hill until they crack, and then eat them. This is similar to our easter egg rolls in America, except we do those on flat ground, and roll them with a spoon! Either way, eggs are a symbol of spring and rebirth, and people have been decorating eggs for easter for centuries. If you want an inexpensive easter project, I highly recommend trying this! 
I’m always up for a crafty project, especially one that has a potential to get really messy! So this year, I decided to investigate how to color easter eggs the natural way, like great-grandma would have done it. I also like the idea of using fewer chemicals, especially if it’s a project to do with your kids. I tried to set my expectations that natural dyes wouldn’t be nearly as vibrant as the candy-colored ones the ‘egg coloring kits’ can produce. I bought a dozen eggs. Immediately I had a problem: eggs in the UK are all BROWN! In the US we could purchase brown or white eggs, so when coloring easter eggs, we always bought white. Hmmm. I could have splurged on expensive white duck eggs, but that seemed a bit excessive for this potential failure of a project. Plus, that’s against the British philosophy of “Make Due and Mend!”. So home I went with my brown eggs. 
Growing up in the US, we always bought hams that were pre-cooked, and just needed glazing and baking in the oven. When I arrived in the UK, I found that hams aren’t called ‘hams’, they’re called ‘gammon’, and they’re completely uncooked. I was a bit intimidated by this at first since it requires boiling and then roasting – but the big benefit is that you can flavor the meat much more than just putting a glaze on a pre-cooked ham. If you’re looking for vintage cooking skills, a ham roast is another easy, impressive main course. And much like the classic roast chicken, gives you a lot of options for leftovers! 
Going through my pantry the other day (full disclosure: My pantry is really one small kitchen cabinet crammed to the brim – ahh the joys of apartment living!) I found unopened dark chocolate Easter bunny that I had stashed away last year. Since Easter is just around the corner, I figured I should really use this one up before the new season of chocolate bunnies appear on my doorstep. OK, I could just eat the chocolate bunny. But it was the weekend and I was feeling more adventurous. I’ve been having a wicked craving for 7-layer bars recently, but haven’t quite made the effort to figure out substitutes for graham crackers etc. here in England. These blondie brownies have that toffee-coconutty goodness of the 7 layer bar, with a very dense chewy consistency. Don’t be discouraged by the super thick batter (mine was basically a dough) of this recipe, just press it into the pan like a cookie dough. Plus, you get the added enjoyment of chopping up an easter bunny, if you have a little pent-up frustration to get out |
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