Easter Cakes (Lavender Cupcakes)

I hope that all of my lovely readers had a fantastic Easter. We really enjoyed our Easter. It was really nice for all of us to just have some time off and be at home together. We've enjoyed things like pancake brunches and crafts with the girls. We also redecorated our kitchen over Easter! (I'll try to post pictures of it later because it is so cute.)

We had some people coming over on Easter Monday for dinner, and Miriam really wanted to make "Easter Cakes". So we made some lavender cupcakes. The lavender just seemed appropriate for Easter--so light and delicate, the flowery taste just seems like spring and new life. Anya helped me to make the cake (she loves mixing), and Miriam helped to decorate them (she loves sprinkles). They are a great desert because they are so light that they are almost refreshing...except for the buttercream icing I put on top, obviously. I just did a simple buttercream with a splash of vanilla extract and food colouring to make it lavender coloured.

For my super easy recipe for lavender cake (or cupcakes), click here.

Too Good For Pictures

The problem with sugar cookies is that everyone likes to make them, and nobody really likes to eat them. It's fun to roll the dough out and cut out shapes and then decorate them. Normally, though, we're left with loads of cookies that look fantastic, but sit on the counter for weeks until some one puts them in the bird feeder.

The other Saturday I was preparing a lesson for church the next day (I teach Sunday School). Miriam thought that I should bring cookies for my class, and both of the girls love helping me bake, so after I finished my preparations we made cookies. They wanted to use the cookie cutters, so we made sugar cookies. I wanted to make them more exciting, though, so I decided to make lavender sugar cookies.

It's very simple, but the results are impressive. I used my normal sugar cookie recipe, but I substituted lavender sugar for half of the sugar. Then, when we were decorating them, I ground up dried lavender flowers using a pestle and mortar, and added them to the icing. I wasn't sure if you would really be able to taste the difference, but it definitely added a delicious twist to a familiar food.

This recipe turned out to be too good for pictures. We ended up with a huge tray of cookies stacked about 5 deep, all cut into little people shapes and decorated. I thought that I would have plenty of time to take some great pictures of them, but I was wrong. The cookies were devoured within a day. They just seemed to disappear in my Sunday School class. So I'm very sorry that there are no pictures, but it has to be a good sign about the recipe when it is eaten too quickly to photograph.