Happy Easter

Easter was not a huge holiday in my family when I was growing up.  Easter Sunday service at our church was really early and out in the middle of a field, so, although my mother and I often went to church, I don’t remember ever making it to that service.  Easter morning generally consisted of getting up and hunting around the house for the eggs we had colored and then finding my Easter basket. 

The eggs we were hunting for were either colored hard boiled eggs or eggs that we had blown out of the shell before coloring.  If you have never blown out an egg, you might not realize how hard this is to do or maybe you wouldn’t realize it was even possible.  You take a needle and make a small hole in each end and then blow until you think your head will pop.  The nice thing about these eggs is you can keep them from year to year if you handle them carefully.  We didn’t have plastic eggs filled with candy, I guess they weren’t invented yet and that makes me feel very old to admit.  There was always at least one egg that went unfound and when the hunting was done there was nothing left to do but have a peanut butter egg.

I don’t remember having big Easter dinners until I was much older and there were grandkids for my parents to fuss over.  I do remember getting together with my aunt’s family sometimes though because one of my cousins had a birthday around that time.  I only recall this because I remember making cakes with my mother that were both Easter themed and birthday themed at the same time.  And I also recall that this particular cousin did not like coconut.

For some reason coconut and Easter just go together.  I don’t know if there is some significance to how they became related or if it is just because coconut makes really good fur on Easter bunny cakes and grass for a basket if you tint it green.  So year after year we had to find ways to make bunny cakes and basket grass without coconut.  One year we cheated.  There is a cake you can make using two round cakes where one becomes the bunny head and the other round gets cut into pieces for the ears and a bow tie.  That year we made this cake; covered the head and ears with coconut and left the bow tie plain for the birthday boy.

Getting back to the peanut butter egg, is there a more perfect Easter candy?  For some reason they are better than the regular peanut butter cups you can buy year round and I will propose that they are even better than the similar peanut butter tree that eventually became available at Christmas.  The peanut butter egg is thicker than the cup giving it a fuller amount of peanut butter filling that compliments the chocolate coating, the perfect ratio of filling to chocolate.  And the rounded shape makes it easy to nibble the chocolate around all the edge until you are left with mostly filling.  A treasure designed for delayed gratification if you are a peanut butter lover.  Keep your jellybeans and Peeps, fill my basket with peanut butter eggs.