Okay so I know Easter was last weekend, but I thought I'd show you some of the stuff I made over the spring festival. As usual, I baked a simnel cake since me and my family do love a bit of fruit cake, especially when there is some marzipan involved aswel! I won't bore you with the history of simnel cake, as I already did that last year (!) but basically it's a light fruit cake with mixed spice, citrus zest, and a layer of marzipan running through the middle, as well as on top. It is traditionally topped with eleven marzipan balls which represent the eleven apostles-simple!


I also made some classic Lenten biscuits, which are simple but ever so tasty crunchy little biscuits, packed with currants, mixed peel and sprinkled with a generous helping of caster sugar.
I love making things that taste delicious but look pretty too, so I had a go at some Easter bonnet biscuits. These are vanilla sable biscuits with a marshmallow on top to make the hat shape, and a coating of coloured royal icing. I finished mine with some simple piping and icing flowers- pretty effective huh?

Ok, so my final Easter bake, and probably my favourite this year, carrot cake complete with marzipan bunnies, carrots and chocolate mini eggs! I actually made this for my sister's birthday as it fell on Easter Monday this year, and so it just seemed right to make her an Easter themed cake!

For the cake, I took a risk and used a different recipe to my norm-but boy I'm glad I did as it turned out to be an absolute delight! The sponge was packed with carrot and raisins but also contained dessicated coconut which gave it an interesting texture without imparting an overpowering coconut flavour. I took the recipe from Claire Clark's book, Desserts, which has a great selection of recipes and some lovely photos.

Unfortunately my icing was a bit of a disaster, as cream cheese always seems to turn into a sloppy mess when I try and convert it into a sweet icing! In the end I had to add nearly a whole pack of icing sugar just to get it to a spreadable consistency, and by the time I had done that you could barely taste the cream cheese so I may as well have just made butter icing! Never mind, atleast I didn't actually use it all and so hopefully my teeth won't be dropping out any time soon!

Last month I decided to have a go at practicing my piping technique by making some iced biscuits for mothers day. I admire the beautiful iced biscuits other people create but I have always thought to myself, surely they are just too much hastle to make? I find that making royal icing can be quite a pain, let alone having to colour it and use various piping bags and tubes to create the desired design. Nevertheless, the biscuits that I have seen on other peoples' blogs do look lovely and I really wanted to atleast try and have a go myself. I dug out some spring themed cookie cutters that I bought last year and got started on making some simple butter biscuits- a Nigella recipe that she claims are biscuits that have a buttery taste and hold their shape during baking. I made butterfly and flower shapes- pretty and feminine- perfect for any mother!

Luckily I had some royal icing already made up so all I had to do was make a few different colours and get piping! Once I got started, I was pleasantly suprised at how addictive icing biscuits actually is. I found myself getting quite carried away and before I knew it, several hours had passed! I am really happy with the finished biscuits, and I'm so glad a had a go. Infact, I think I'm on a bit of a roll, as I even decided to make some Easter themed ones. Do you like?

Although I was lucky to receive chocolate eggs this year (and a box of creme eggs yum!) I still couldn't resist doing some more easter baking as I thought we may aswel make the most of scoffing lots of naughty treats! I decided on rocky road, shortbread egg biscuits sandwiched together with chocolate spread and chewy mini egg cookies for an easter theme.

My sister and her boyfriend came in the evening so we had lots of snacks to keep us going! I took the rocky road recipe from the Sainsburys magazine calendar I got last year. I knew it was a good recipe as my grandma has made some before which were delightful so I had to try out the recipe myself. These bars are really chocolatey and perfect when you need a sweet fix- I added extra cherries, marshmallows and raisins so the slices were packed full of yummyness! The only problem is they are ever so moreish- I never seem to be able to stop at one!