Easter Treats (Coconut Cream Cake & Italian Easter Cookies)

Coconut Cream Cake

I always notice delicious looking and festive white cakes covered in coconut for Easter on social media, surrounding the holiday. This year, I needed one - I am eating for two ya know?!  And they just look too good- aaaaand my glucose test isn't until Wednesday! I found a recipe and decided to make a few adjustments to it and it turned out delicious, moist, coconut-y, and had cream cheese frosting. Does it get better? Well, for a dessert that doesn't contain chocolate anyway, no, I don't think it does! What I'm saying is, I'd recommend the thing! The original recipe can be found here.

These are the adjustments I made:

Instead of 1 stick of butter and 1 cup of canola oil, I used 2 sticks of butter (1cup) and 1/2 cup of sour cream.

Instead of doing frosting in between the layers, I filled each layer with coconut instant pudding. I used almost and entire 3.4oz box between the two layers. Then I found that I only needed to make 3/4 of the frosting recipe to frost the top and sides of the cake.

Finally, I opted out of adding the pecans to the frosting, only because my baking assistant disapproved, and I wanted her to enjoy the cake too, otherwise, I totally would have had them in there and I think it would have been all the yummier!

If I remake this cake, the only change I would make is to lighten the cake a bit by replacing some of the flour with corn starch as show here.

Pre-frosted 3 layers

Anytime I bake anything, Eden is right there scooting her chair across the kitchen floor to assist me, asking, "Whacha makin'? Can I help?!" <3

Italian Easter Cookies

When I was living in Italy for a church mission, I came across these super fun and yummy Easter cookies called Cuddura di Pasqua. Reed and I are always trying to to figure out ways to bring our mission cultures into the home and into our traditions. So this year I sifted through some recipes until I found this one (which I translated at the bottom of the post). I made a few adjustments to it, and converted the ingredients from the metric system, since I don't have a food scale. I also cut the batch in half and actually could have just done a quarter batch since one cookie/egg was enough to fill each person. Also, in Italy there are many shapes they use for this cookie and typically they cross two pieces of dough over the egg, perpendicular to each other, to symbolize the cross. This year, I went with a basket design. 

We decided to color our eggs first, but obviously, you can use plain hard boiled eggs. 

Then I made the dough and chilled it in the fridge while our eggs were drying. When it was chilled I pressed it out with my hands and cut out 6 circles. Then I took myself back to my playdoh days and started rolling our a bunch of snakes with the remaining dough. I twisted two snakes together and laid it around the circles of dough. Then I placed the eggs in the center of each and made more twisted pieces to lay over each egg as a basket handle. 

After this I basted each basket with beaten egg (one egg is more than enough) and covered them each with sprinkles, before baking them.

After the cookies are baked, they need to be stored in the fridge until it's time to eat 'em.

Cuddura di Pasqua

Wait to preheat the oven until the dough is chilled (around an hour or so) and you are ready prep the dough to be baked. 

(for 6 large cookies)

In a large mixing bowl combine:

-4 cups of flour

-1 cup of sugar

-1/2 tsp baking soda

-1/2 TBSP baking powder

-Pinch of Salt

Blend dry ingredients with a whisk, then add:

-1 stick of butter (slightly softened and cut in slices)

-2 eggs

-1/3 Cup milk

-1 tsp vanilla extract

-Grated peel of one lemon

You can mix the batter together in a food processor and then knead it, but I just kneaded all of the ingredients from the get go with my hands until a ball of dough formed. You may need to add a little more milk or flour, but wait to see how the dough forms after working it for a while first. You want a pretty thick dough that's not too sticky. 

Chill dough (around an hour)

Preheat oven to 400 degrees (IMPORTANT: decrease heat to 350 once you place cookies in the oven). 

Shape dough and then add one HARD BOILED egg to the middle of each cookie (6).

Baste dough generously with beaten egg.

Sprinkle with sprinkles

Bake for 20 Mins (rotate pan 180 halfway through cooking)

Allow cookies to cool and then refrigerate them until ready to be eaten.