Happy Easter!

To me, Easter is about the (temporary) permanence of spring, which is indisputable no matter what your religious background. I get really excited about Easter and have been busy planning and shopping for days! I like the renewal and fertility symbolism of the lilies, eggs, bunnies, and, um, chocolates. So I was up at the crack of dawn (or as some would say, 6:50) making coffee cake for my family to start the day off right. It's a sour cream coffee cake, from a recipe my mom has been making my whole life.


After a mellow morning that passed blissfully slow since I got up so early, we invited family over for a "finger food brunch." My idea was to have a bunch of hors d'ouevres and small plates and sit around chatting rather than a more formal sit-down meal. My contribution was mini crabcakes. I found the recipe in the April 2009 bon appetit. They were really fun to make and tasted fantastic. (I even invested in a mini muffin pan.) Definitely will try again for my future appetizer needs. This is the best of a bad series of pictures of them.


Gramma & Grampa brought a yummy ham and Grandmaman brought a nice selection of rustic breads, plus some boucheron, so we could make hearty ham sandwiches. Here's the Easter table (below) before we got started. You can see in the front left I enlisted my trusty whisky glasses to hold our favorite Temeraire dijon mustard plus some cornichons. (Those brown eggs are dyed with onion skins by the way. I need to learn how to do that! They reminded me so much of another happy Easter day with some good friends in Ontario. Love you KvH!)


Also Grampa brought some special, fresh kielbasa. It was delicious and served with horseradish. (I took a picture as fast as I could, but it was already mostly gone by then!)


For drinks we had white wine, and I also bought a prosecco to make Hibiscus Bubbles. I read about this over at Papawow and made the hibiscus extract (basically simple syrup infused with hibiscus flowers for 20 minutes) on Saturday. I think it was a hit! The hibiscus made a nice counterpoint to the sparkling wine. It seemed (and looked) like an herbal kir.



There was also dessert! In keeping with my "mini" theme, Great Aunt C brought small tartlet shells with a custardy lemon filling, and also tiny tartlets with piped chocolate. The combination was so good, I kept going back and forth from the cool soft lemon to the burly richness of chocolate. And fresh berries were a little hint of all the harvest goodness that's coming our way. It all starts today. Enjoy the bounty that is New England from April to October! (Sorry, Ma, couldn't resist stealing your "6 good months" theory!)