I was going to make a fancy dancy dessert for easter, but I spent too much time looking for the perfect one which left no time for actually making dessert (though I will make this cake some day). Most of the recipes for our easter dinner came out of Suzanne Goin’s fantastic book, Sunday Suppers at Lucques and I found a simple springtime dessert in there too: Tangelo Creamsicles. These are super delicious and you need to make them.  A recipe is pretty much unnecessary, all you do is squeeze some tangelos (which I think are oranges crossed with grapefruits?) and pour them over vanilla ice cream. Tangelo juice is on the sour side so you don’t need too much of it (should be about half as much liquid that’s in a root beer float). When we were pouring the juice over the ice cream my husband and I were pretty skeptical.  I mean, it’s pretty much just orange juice and milk mixed together, which sounds totally disgusting.  But instead it turned out to be more like the best creamsicle ever. We will be eating these until I can’t find tangelos anymore.

We had a lovely easter with lots and lots of food and only a few sugar related meltdowns. I finished the bunny bowling pins in time, but couldn’t get the ball to turn out round, so we just used a ball we already had. It turns out he idea of bunny bowling is much more exciting then the actual thing. I weighted down the bunnies a little too much and it takes quite a bit of force to knock the damn things down (you can see my son just gave up on the ball and used his little head). Oh well, my kids don’t really understand what bowling is anyway. And they make excellent whappers.

I suppose there are people out there who don’t care for peeps, but I’ve never met them. Most people I know eat them this time of year with abandon and many have their own special way of enjoying them: I like mine stale, for instance (just like my mom), and I had an old boyfriend who liked to burn the little bunnies with his lighter before he ate them–so tough.  But this year instead of buying my peeps, I thought I’d make them. They’re just marshmallows sprinkled with sugar, how hard could it be?  Not hard really, after you royally screw up a couple of batches and have to throw them out, run out of colored sugar (by the second chick), have a small sugar induced meltdown, suck it up and make your own colored sugar (just throw some white sugar and a couple drops of food coloring in a food processor–nothing to freak out about), and come to terms with the fact that every other bunny you make will be a mutant, so no, not hard at all. The most important thing is not to over whip the marshmallows. They should have very soft peaks and can even still be a little warm. I used martha’s marshmallows for piping recipe, which is strangely lacking in the flavor department, so add vanilla extract (or peppermint or licorice or pineapple or whatever your little heart desires), but other than that it was great–and she has piping directions here. Oh and they are freakin delicious, fresh or stale.

I keep forgeting to say thank you for all the congratulations and kind words from all of you about my pregnancy. Thank you so much! It is so wonderful to hear and much needed as I’m freaking out a bit about having three kids under three. Better go eat some more peeps.

This is the project I was telling you about yesterday.  The blue one didn’t turn out quite right obviously–you can’t really see the bunny–but hell if I’m going to unpick the whole thing just to fix it. The others are fine anyway. I wanted to hand embroider all of them to make the bunny really stand out, but after doing one set of ears I ran out of patience and just did it on the machine. I was too nervous to go whole hog and put the feet dogs down and embroider it the real way, so I just did sort of fake machine embroidery and it turned out okay. I haven’t told you what they are, but I’m sure all you smartypants out there can guess.

I didn’t just lurch my pregnant self off the couch and whip these up after the last post. No, I made them last year, but they were such a hit I thought I’d share. Actually I dug these out of the Easter box a few months ago, desperate for some quiet playtime on a very cold winter day. These bunnies have been pancakes and cookies, baseballs and money (bunny money!) and plain old bean bags too. I took this picture right after I made them and good thing I did because they are sad, dirty grey bunnies now, but still loved.  I stole the idea and design from the wonderfully talented Courtney at two straight lines. Hers are of course much nicer and she even made a cabbage to toss them into! It’s a quick project–one that can be done the night before Easter if you are anything like me. I started on a bunny project yesterday that I’m very excited about–we’ll see if it get’s done in time for Easter. What are you making for your kiddo’s baskets?