Sweet Easter Treats for Easter Week…..Cake, Hot Cross Buns, Eggs & Floral Baking Gifts

Easter Simnel Cake

Sweet Easter Treats for Easter Week…..

Cake, Hot Cross Buns, Eggs & Floral Baking Gifts

Easter Flowers

After my HUGE March Tea Time Treats round-up posts here – Tea Time Treats Part one and Part Two, I am taking a bit of a holiday today, and thought that a really useful and helpful article might be to post all my Easter sweet treats in one place; I DO have more Easter baking to share this week, as well as some Good Friday fish articles too, but for now are some of my recent Spring-time and Easter recipes in a handy single post! Sweet Easter Treats for Easter Week…..Cake, Hot Cross Buns, Eggs & Floral Baking Gifts……..I hope you will find some inspiration for your Easter weekend baking and maybe for some gifts too……..

The History of Hot Cross Buns

~ Traditional Hot Cross Buns Recipe ~

Hot Cross Buns

This recipe is adapted from a Tudor recipe for spiced baked buns, and has been my favourite Hot Cross Bun recipe for some years now, mainly for the blend of spices and fruity filling, as well as a light but filling nice texture too. I add an egg to my flour paste for the crosses, hence them being so yellow – NO artificial colouring there, but just good free-range eggy goodness!

~ Traditional Easter Marbled Pace Eggs ~

Pace Eggs for Easter

Traditional Easter Marbled Pace Eggs

This is a very old British tradition & method of colouring and dying eggs to be boiled and eaten on Good Friday & throughout the Easter weekend. There are commercial dyes available nowadays, but I still prefer the traditional natural methods of colouring my Easter Pace Eggs – onions skins. (And also spinach & beetroot water)

Little Chocolate & Violet Fancies

Little Chocolate & Violet Fancies

Dainty little chocolate cakes that are subtly flavoured with violet sugar and decorated with crystallised flowers – perfect for Mother’s Day, Birthdays or Easter. The violet sugar and crystallised violets recipes are posted on my blog here: Violet Sugar and Crystallised Violets.

A Kaleidoscope of Fancies

A Kaleidoscope of Fancies

A Kaleidoscope of Fancies

Fancies is a wonderful old-fashioned word for cakes that are cut into different shapes, decorated with assorted butter-cream and icing of different colours with a sundry selection of candies jellies, hundreds and thousands, silver balls and other suitable edible decorations.

Victorian Spring Posy Cake

Victorian Spring Posy Cake

Victorian Spring Posy Cake

One of my recent cake inventions – a standard Victoria Sandwich Sponge with a few delicious additions. Fresh oranges and lemons, lemon curd, crystallised violets and mascarpone cheese make this basic sponge cake moist and special enough for the Easter Sunday tea-time table.

Home-made Sweet Violet Sugar for Cakes and Bakes

Home-made Sweet Violet Sugar for Cakes and Bakes

Home-made Sweet Violet Sugar for Cakes and Bakes

Sweet Violet Sugar – a delightful old-fashioned floral sugar that is wonderful when added to cakes, bakes, desserts, custards, ice creams as well as home-made chocolates and sweets.

Home-made Crystallised Violets for Cakes & Bakes

Home-made Crystallised Violets for Cakes & Bakes

Home-made Crystallised Violets for Cakes & Bakes

Violet on green, air heavy with scent……..peeping through after winter cold and heralding spring and beyond; lace and antique jugs with posies so gay, promises of sunshine and longer days. Old fashioned scent on hankies and scarves, cut glass bowls of candies and  sweets……afternoon tea, your best china cups, sugar lumps and tongs with violet topped cakes…….grandmothers, aunties and mothers with crisply starched linen.

Old Fashioned Sweet Violet Syrup

Old Fashioned Sweet Violet Syrup

 Old Fashioned Sweet Violet Syrup

This violet syrup is great when added to icings and buttercream for cakes; and is wonderful when used in beverages –  only a small amount is needed to add to sparkling wine or lemonade for a delectable and elegant drink. I have also added the syrup as a  flavouring for homemade macaroons, French Macarons. Why not make a homemade violet ice cream, or add this syrup to junkets and blancmanges, the list is endless.

Fresh Orange Layer Cake with Citrus Curd Buttercream

Fresh Orange Layer Cake with Citrus Curd Buttercream

Fresh Orange Layer Cake with Citrus Curd Buttercream

If there is one thing that will cheer us all up it has to be cake – a large home-made layer cake filled with oodles of citrus curd buttercream and brazenly decorated with hundreds and thousands as well as those little jellied lemon sweeties you can get from old-fashioned sweet shops. Not an elegant cake as such, but just a big blousey cake, with fresh oranges and nostalgic decorations of childhood years. And the star of this cake for me is the gorgeous buttercream which has a large dollop or three of home-made orange and lemon curd in it; I made the curd a few days ago and the recipe is here: St Clement’s Curd – Orange & Lemon Curd.

That’s all for today, see you tomorrow with more Easter recipes…….Karen