Easter

Spring is finally on the horizon. It just so happens to be one of my favourite seasons (I'm still yet to make up my mind on which season takes the title of favourite) and I find it becomes so much easier to be happy and positive around this time of year. Everything just seems to suddenly become so much more invigorated and alive after a long, desolate winter period. Trees start to bud, flowers start to bloom, birds begin to build nests and the first hints of warmish sunny weather for a long ol' time start to creep beyond the clouds. Despite this, it does seem to be that awkward period of the year where one moment it's warm enough for tshirt weather and the next you're stuck in the middle of nowhere mid way through a tropical thunder storm with no coat. Thank god those longer, lighter evenings signal the ever closer arrival of summer.

Easter is probably most people's favourite bank holiday of the year, consisting of a long weekend away from work and school, a perfect excuse to indulge in far too much chocolate, and this weekend usually has more sun than the entirety of summer for some bizarre reason (thanks British weather).
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Why, when I was younger, I believed in a giant, magical white bunny who creeps into your house at night to hide chocolate eggs inside every cupboard and behind every piece of furniture I will never know. It seems kinda odd to think about it as an adult, but I guess that's one of those things that you miss about being a kid, having such a vivid imagination of what the world is like, without the restrictions of logic or the laws of physics! I have really fond memories of Easter egg hunts around the garden with my family, desperately trying to figure out the hand-written note with riddles and clues as to where chocolately loot was hidden, running around frantically with a little wicker basket in my hand collecting everything remotely resembling chocolate. I'm not going to lie, I was quite the Easter egg discoverer (and never so good at modesty) so obviously finding the most eggs will forever feel like some kind of momentous triumph (of course I always shared them out with my siblings..ahem).. but mum always seemed to have a good relationship with the Easter bunny, so he tended to come twice within one day, leading to two epic hunts and leaving me and my siblings with enough sugar to sink several battleships.

I don't usually tend to eat a whole lot of chocolate, but when I do I'm definitely a dark chocolate kinda guy. This year we opted to create some Easter themed nest cakes, mostly an ideal recipe because they don't involve any baking, something that isn't really the strongest trait within my skill set, accompanied my annual intake of creme egg brownies. Brownies seem to be one of the hardest thing to get right in terms of baking, so anything that turns out even remotely aesthetically pleasing or edible looking is a triumph for me. I salute anyone who can make the perfect recipe every time, but one of my favourite things about baking is the imperfect nature of it, getting my hands dirty, the home-made look and that 'I made this myself' satisfaction when you finally finish the process, despite the quality of the final result! Some of my fondest memories are of baking with my nan when I was younger (or as I like to call her, the biscuit magician), getting more cake mixture on myself and up the walls than in the actual cake itself and ending up with a gloopy mess which probably tasted awful, but I was proud of it.

Happy Easter!