Beautiful Easter Bakes

When I write recipes for The Good Food Channel, they often set me a bit of a challenge to see what I can come up with. This time the task was to develop some Simnel Cookies. But what would you expect Simnel Cookies to look and taste like? Would you expect them to look like a simnel cake with 11 marzipan balls on the top? I wasn’t convinced this would be a particularly tasty biscuit idea so I decided to use the flavours for inspiration instead.

I packed the biscuits with a selection of dried fruits and orange zest – very similar to the Shrewsbury biscuit. To mimic all that marzipan I whipped up a fluffly buttercream filling flavoured with almond extract.

I wanted to keep them ladylike to serve on the side of a cup and saucer, so opted for two miniature fruity biscuits sandwiched with a layer of  the almond cream. The kind of baked treat you can just pop in your mouth in one go. The kind of baked treat you could probably eat quite a lot of, coz they’re only small!

If you package them up in a pretty box or tin and tie with ribbon they’d make a lovely edible gift over Easter – especially for those people who aren’t mad keen on chocolate. I know, freaks right!

Simnel cookies: Get the recipe here>>>

This is Lucy Lovell’s take on the Simnel Cake, but her version is a luscious lemon cake topped with 11 cake pops coated in white chocolate. I’ll hold my hands up and fully admit that the idea of making cake pops made me audibly wince. Everything Lucy makes is always utterly perfect. She’s one of those very precise and neat types. Me, I’m a bit more haphazard. Truth be told i’m a bit of a clumso.

So I’m hugely proud of how my version of Lucy’s recipe turned out. If I can do it folks, so can you! It’s worth the effort, as I’d much rather be tucking into a zingy lemon cake at Easter than chewing my way through a wedge of fruit cake and marzipan!

Lucy’s Lemon Simnel Cake: Get the recipe here>>>

And to finish off there’s a hit of chocolate. This is another of Lucy’s recipes that I made for the photoshoot. Delicious tartlets that look like Easter Nests. Definitely for chocolate lovers as the little pastry shells are filled with a gorgeous rich ganache and topped with toasted coconut and mini chocolate eggs. Again, they’re far too easy to keep popping into your mouth, and the next thing you know you’ve eaten three! Well if you can’t treat yourself at Easter when can you?!

Chocolate Easter Tartlets: Get the recipe here>>>

Thanks to Sharron Gibson as ever for her stunning photography…