EASTER EGGS-TRAVAGANZA!
Turns out, I really enjoy inviting a few people over just to have a reason to make a big production (and show off my mad skills) – to try out new recipes and some DIYs from Pinterest. I found a ton of Easter recipes and crafts ( check out my Easter Board ) but I think the “glow in the dark egg hunt” was the driving force behind the idea to have an Easter party at home this year.
The Food
- Italian Easter Pie (Pizza Rustica this year)
- Honey Baked Ham
- Garlic Parmesan Roasted Asparagus
- Mashed Potatoes
- Caprese Salad
- Sicilian Ricotta Cheesecake
- Bird's Nest Cupcakes
- Chips and Salsa (because, chips and salsa)
The Fun!
- Easter Egg Painting
- Glow in the Dark/Flashlight Egg Hunt
Let’s start with the FOOD!
Italian Easter Pie – this year I tried my hand at Pizza Rustica. I followed a recipe by Giada De Laurentiis that I found on Food Network here. I modified this recipe by adding both hot and sweet Italian sausage (3 sweet, 2 hot), half of the spinach it called for, and I added sun-dried tomatoes. This came out absolutely amazing and only 1 tiny slice was left by the end of the night.
Totally forgot to take pictures of the prep and the filling before sealing it into the dough, but here’s the before, the after and a slice of the cheesy, meaty, creamy goodness!
Italian Easter Pie – this year I tried my hand at Pizza Rustica. I followed a recipe by Giada De Laurentiis that I found on Food Network here. I modified this recipe by adding both hot and sweet Italian sausage (3 sweet, 2 hot), half of the spinach it called for, and I added sun-dried tomatoes. This came out absolutely amazing and only 1 tiny slice was left by the end of the night.
Totally forgot to take pictures of the prep and the filling before sealing it into the dough, but here’s the before, the after and a slice of the cheesy, meaty, creamy goodness!
Garlic Parmesan Roasted Asparagus – this is an easy one. Clean and trim the asparagus, coat
with EVOO, minced garlic, grated parmesan, and a little salt. Throw them in the roasting pan and
in the oven at 400° for 45 minutes (we like the ends a little crispy).
The Mashed Potatoes – I must confess, these were the store-bought, already made, just heat up in the microwave kind and they were delicious!
Caprese Salad – this is an easy and delicious (not to mention, fancy looking) side for almost any meal. Sliced tomatoes, sliced mozzarella, chopped fresh basil and balsamic vinegar or vinaigrette.
Sicilian Ricotta Cheesecake – my first ever attempt at baking any kind of cheesecake.
I’ll admit, I may have overcooked it a bit (notice the dark brown edges) but it was still delicious! I followed a recipe by Garlic Girl that I found on Pinterest here. The batter tasted way too sweet (even for me, the sugar addict) so I skipped the powdered sugar dusting. I would later find out that cooking it evened out the sweetness and adding the powdered sugar would have be just fine.
Bird’s Nest Cupcakes – the last minute addition (as if I didn’t already have a hefty menu to prepare). OMG, not only were these super cute, they tasted AMAZING! Saturday morning, the day of the party, I was just perusing Pinterest and these Bird’s Nest Cupcakes happen to be first on my feed. I checked the cabinet and low-and-behold, we had a box of Devil’s Food Cake mix! However, I did not have chocolate frosting and since I did have to run to Publix to get the sun-dried tomatoes I wanted to add to the Easter pie, I added the chocolate frosting to the list (and they happened to be on-sale, buy one, get one free – score!).
I couldn’t find any chocolate eggs for the eggs in the nest (it’s the day before Easter, I didn’t think I would find anything!) so I used jelly beans. But, later that night after the party, when the Easter Bunny got to work, turns out the bunny had already purchased not one but TWO bags of those chocolate eggs I was so disappointed about not being able to find…so, you know what that means…I had to take off the jelly beans from the remaining cupcakes and add the chocolate eggs for the sake of this post (yes, I’m a little nutty like that…..falls under the category of “adding completed tasks to the list, just to cross them off’).
Now The FUN!
Easter Egg Painting – our favorite Easter Tradition, coloring eggs for the Easter Bunny to hide! This year we bought “Dudley’s Spin an Egg” decorating kit and had a lot of fun spinning the eggs to get some cool looking, paint splattered eggs. My son called them “Monster Hunter” eggs (I learned that’s a video game/anime thing and yes, that’s exactly what these eggs looked like). Very cool.
First, we dyed the eggs. Then we put the dyed egg in the spinner, added a few drops of the paint provided and began the spinning! After a few pumps of the spinner, the egg was looking awesome. We did run out of paint before we ran out of eggs so we used a few drops of food coloring to finish off the remaining eggs.
After we stuffed our faces it was time for the egg hunt, but it was still light out. So, while we waited for dark…
Once it started to get dark, it was time to dry off and eat some cupcakes; they needed energy for the egg hunt!
Look closely; see my dope Super Mario décor? Leftovers from the Super Mario Birthday Odyssey!
The Glow in the Dark Egg Hunt – the main event! I don’t know who was more excited about this, me or the kids! This was way fun. We used glow stick bracelets inside of the plastic Easter eggs and let me tell you, this worked way better than I thought it would. We had to roll up the bracelets to make them fit, and I was surprised that the eggs didn’t just pop right open (well, we did have one non-compliant egg and it was quite the challenge to get that sucker to snap shut and stay shut). Other than the glow stick bracelets, we filled the eggs with candy, and some with dollar bills (Easter Bunny dollar bills would’ve been awesome, but it was an afterthought). Since we had more eggs than glow sticks, we gave the kids flashlights to help them find the eggs that didn’t glow. They had a blast running around the yard in the dark, looking for eggs (and we grown-ups had a blast watching).
FYI – if you notice how bright it still looks at night, it’s not street lights because our street doesn’t have any; it was the second (and last) Blue Moon of 2018 keeping the sky so bright.
And that’s a wrap! The food, the fun…the exhaustion! Not gonna lie, all the cooking was a lot of work for this time-deprived working mama. But, it made one eggs-ellent Easter celebration with the family and THAT alone made it totally worth it!
But wait, there’s more!
Easter morning calls for a big Breakfast Casserole! This is a simple recipe that my mom used to make on Christmas morning.
Easter Morning/Christmas Morning Breakfast Casserole:
Bring your momma bring your sister bring your daddy bring your dog, I don't care who bring, just follow Jenny on the Blog!
The Mashed Potatoes – I must confess, these were the store-bought, already made, just heat up in the microwave kind and they were delicious!
Caprese Salad – this is an easy and delicious (not to mention, fancy looking) side for almost any meal. Sliced tomatoes, sliced mozzarella, chopped fresh basil and balsamic vinegar or vinaigrette.
Sicilian Ricotta Cheesecake – my first ever attempt at baking any kind of cheesecake.
I’ll admit, I may have overcooked it a bit (notice the dark brown edges) but it was still delicious! I followed a recipe by Garlic Girl that I found on Pinterest here. The batter tasted way too sweet (even for me, the sugar addict) so I skipped the powdered sugar dusting. I would later find out that cooking it evened out the sweetness and adding the powdered sugar would have be just fine.
Bird’s Nest Cupcakes – the last minute addition (as if I didn’t already have a hefty menu to prepare). OMG, not only were these super cute, they tasted AMAZING! Saturday morning, the day of the party, I was just perusing Pinterest and these Bird’s Nest Cupcakes happen to be first on my feed. I checked the cabinet and low-and-behold, we had a box of Devil’s Food Cake mix! However, I did not have chocolate frosting and since I did have to run to Publix to get the sun-dried tomatoes I wanted to add to the Easter pie, I added the chocolate frosting to the list (and they happened to be on-sale, buy one, get one free – score!).
I couldn’t find any chocolate eggs for the eggs in the nest (it’s the day before Easter, I didn’t think I would find anything!) so I used jelly beans. But, later that night after the party, when the Easter Bunny got to work, turns out the bunny had already purchased not one but TWO bags of those chocolate eggs I was so disappointed about not being able to find…so, you know what that means…I had to take off the jelly beans from the remaining cupcakes and add the chocolate eggs for the sake of this post (yes, I’m a little nutty like that…..falls under the category of “adding completed tasks to the list, just to cross them off’).
Now The FUN!
Easter Egg Painting – our favorite Easter Tradition, coloring eggs for the Easter Bunny to hide! This year we bought “Dudley’s Spin an Egg” decorating kit and had a lot of fun spinning the eggs to get some cool looking, paint splattered eggs. My son called them “Monster Hunter” eggs (I learned that’s a video game/anime thing and yes, that’s exactly what these eggs looked like). Very cool.
First, we dyed the eggs. Then we put the dyed egg in the spinner, added a few drops of the paint provided and began the spinning! After a few pumps of the spinner, the egg was looking awesome. We did run out of paint before we ran out of eggs so we used a few drops of food coloring to finish off the remaining eggs.
After we stuffed our faces it was time for the egg hunt, but it was still light out. So, while we waited for dark…
Once it started to get dark, it was time to dry off and eat some cupcakes; they needed energy for the egg hunt!
Look closely; see my dope Super Mario décor? Leftovers from the Super Mario Birthday Odyssey!
The Glow in the Dark Egg Hunt – the main event! I don’t know who was more excited about this, me or the kids! This was way fun. We used glow stick bracelets inside of the plastic Easter eggs and let me tell you, this worked way better than I thought it would. We had to roll up the bracelets to make them fit, and I was surprised that the eggs didn’t just pop right open (well, we did have one non-compliant egg and it was quite the challenge to get that sucker to snap shut and stay shut). Other than the glow stick bracelets, we filled the eggs with candy, and some with dollar bills (Easter Bunny dollar bills would’ve been awesome, but it was an afterthought). Since we had more eggs than glow sticks, we gave the kids flashlights to help them find the eggs that didn’t glow. They had a blast running around the yard in the dark, looking for eggs (and we grown-ups had a blast watching).
FYI – if you notice how bright it still looks at night, it’s not street lights because our street doesn’t have any; it was the second (and last) Blue Moon of 2018 keeping the sky so bright.
And that’s a wrap! The food, the fun…the exhaustion! Not gonna lie, all the cooking was a lot of work for this time-deprived working mama. But, it made one eggs-ellent Easter celebration with the family and THAT alone made it totally worth it!
But wait, there’s more!
Easter morning calls for a big Breakfast Casserole! This is a simple recipe that my mom used to make on Christmas morning.
Easter Morning/Christmas Morning Breakfast Casserole:
- Ingredients
- 6 Eggs, beaten (added a little Sazon Completa – because we use that stuff on everything)
- Hash browns – the frozen kind (we used Alexia Yukon Gold), cooked
- Breakfast Sausage links (2 packages; about 20 links), chopped
- Shredded cheese (whichever cheese you like)
- Cooking Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 425°
- Mix together the cooked hash browns, sausage, eggs, and half of the shredded cheese.
- Bake in the oven for 1hr; melt the remaining shredded cheese on top for the last 5 mins.
Bring your momma bring your sister bring your daddy bring your dog, I don't care who bring, just follow Jenny on the Blog!
This is amazing! Love the glow eggs. Also glad to learn I’m not the only lunatic that writes completed tasks just to cross them off ... : )
ReplyDelete- Tiffany
Thank you!
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