Easter Treats and an Easter egg hunt

Yesterday, with a little help from my 6 year old daughter Poppy, we embarked upon some Easter treat making. We had treats to make for an Easter egg hunt we were invited to today, as well dessert for dinner last night, to which we had invited Grandparents, and a little Easter present for Grandma (often referred to here as Grandma Kiwicakes). Grandma' cake was made using a 3 inch diameter cake pan and a chocolate wrap with a pattern of leaves I splashed on some edible gold lustre dust in metallic Sunny Savannah The chocolate eggs came from the Warehouse and are Walker brand. The black are Rum & Raisin and the red are Cherry.

Not everything went according to plan - in the past I have made these little Easter cupcakes, with Jelly Beans for eggs. This time thinking I had made the cupcakes with grass, too often. I decided to try baskets.

This was spurred on by the recent purchase of THUNDERPIPES from the local 4 square. Thunderpipes are for want of a better description, coloured licorice with a sour fizzy filling. I thought they'd make great basket handles. I set about colouring some buttercream icing, to pipe straw on the cupcakes. The moral of this story is............. if you've never used a particular shade of icing colour before, it would pay to test it out on a small amount of icing first, instead of believing the sticker on the outside of the bottle. My straw was a bit on the peachy side. Never mind I thought, it's only for kids and pushed ahead. Once finished, I knew I was right, not to waste an entire batch of icing, when the kids declared "they're so cool Mum!". This morning however when we woke up, all of the thunderpipes had snapped under the pressure of being bent. Luckily the local 4 square is open on Easter Sunday and I raced down for replacement handles.

I took them to the Easter hunt with mini birds nests on the tray

The cupcake papers I used for the nests came from the local supermarket, they were just what I needed for nests, as they had very low sides (I wouldn't want to bake cupcakes in them), perfect for nests, as they don't look right, if you fill a regular cupcake paper up to the top, they are too high.