Easter EGGstravaganza!

Happy Easter!

The boy makes the strangest faces, both on and off camera!

I hope you've all had a lovely day, filled with lots of fun and chocolate! ;) As the above poster/invite suggests, we had an Easter EGGstravaganza to go to today! First though, chocolate in the form of mini eggs...

And an Easter Egg Hunt at my sister's house...

Toby was so proud of himself for "hiding" this row of eggs!!

We also exchanged some Easter eggs while we there. My Dad went shopping at Hotel Chocolat, yum!

Super thick egg for Liam and I to share - can't wait to open this later!!

Eggs my sisters gave to the children

Izzy's egg from Dad

Dad decided to wrap Toby's egg up in his scarf?!!!

After a while, we left Sarah's house and went to my Mum's for the "Eggstravaganza"...

Probably the only "running reference" you'll see on the blog, haha, my Mum and Colin's magnets from last year's London marathon!

We decorated hard boiled eggs...

My Grandma popped over to say hi (not really egg related, but hey ho!)...

And then we ate omelettes (mushroom and goats cheese for me, cheddar and ham for the others)...

and mini creme egg filled brownies...

This was my second attempt at making the brownies. I used my normal fudgy brownie recipe, but the first time I doubled the batch and put the mini creme eggs in the middle of the two layers. Despite cooking them for double the usual amount of cooking time, they never set up...

They were still just about edible, but not quite what I'd imagined. I'd been planning to put them into little bags to give as Easter gifts which obviously wasn't possible!!

I now feel completely chocolated out and I haven't even eaten that much chocolate today - we haven't opened any of our eggs yet and we certainly do have a lot of them...!

Toby's eggs...

and Izzy's...

And Liam and I have the two eggs in the middle to share. So much chocolate!! Liam's family are going to be arriving any minute now also, no doubt with more eggs for the children. We are very lucky to have so many relatives who we see and who want to give the children (and us) chocolate...but it does get a bit ridiculous. Last year we were still eating up Easter eggs well into August!!!

Have you eaten lots of chocolate today? Or done anything else to celebrate Easter if you celebrate it? Whilst I do, of course, love chocolate, the thing I love most about occasions like Easter is getting together with all the family members. I see my family quite regularly, but we hardly ever see Liam's family so it will be nice to see them this afternoon. I also love watching Izzy have fun - she must have hidden those little eggs at least 7 or 8 times, for different people to find, or other people hid them for her to find. She was so excited! Oh to still see the world through a child's eyes!!

Lots & Lots of Food!!

Evening! Hope you've all been enjoying Easter Sunday! I have eaten soooo much food today! After a big breakfast at the beach hut this morning, we went to Mum's house for a buffet lunch. We were trying out food that we had originally thought we'd have at the wedding, and in that respect the buffet wasn't successful - the portion sizes were not enough for the money, the vegetarian option wasn't impressive enough etc - so we will have to go back to the drawing board with regards to wedding food, eek! However the food itself was really delicious. I had decided that, despite not having eaten meat or fish since a meal out two months ago, I would try a little bit of the salmon...

there was also coronation chicken and ham which I didn't eat, as well as a rather ugly looking, but delicious tasting butternut squash "terrine"...

this was really tasty - it had butternut squash, lentils and other stuff (!) in it (I can't remember!!) and was great spread on bread. However it doesn't really look good enough to be the vegetarian option compared to poached salmon, ham, coronation chicken etc - I'd be a bit insulted if I was only given salads and a hunk of pate to eat! Will have to re-think. Some of Mum's friends have offered to make quiches so may go down that route, we'll see.

The above food was all from M&S, then we supplemented it with some salads from Waitrose...

some kind of bean salad (I avoided), roast veg couscous, coleslaw & pasta salad, plus lettuce, tomatoes, bread etc. All together...

and this was my plate (I gave the prawn to daughter as she loves them way more than I do!)...

I went back for seconds of the butternut squash pate, bread, coleslaw and couscous, yum.

Of course, the thing I was most looking forward to was the cakes...

I'd made the lemon poppy seed muffins with a lemon glaze between breakfast and lunch today...

again from the Muffins Fast and Fantastic book by Susan Reimer that I linked to yesterday. The creme egg cupcakes were an idea from My Baking Addiction and turned out really well - my icing normally lets my cakes down but I was quite impressed with these so excuse the excessive amount of photos!!

the moment of truth though came when I cut one open at Mum's...

and I'm pleased to report they were a success - the mini creme egg was still whole inside - freezing them before cooking worked!! :)

Yum, these tasted delicious too! I'm not normally a huge fan of chocolate cakes as they can be a bit dry, but between the creme egg inside and the huge amount of icing on top, these were really good!

I also ate a lemon poppy seed muffin...

these were good too, the muffins themselves weren't actually that lemony but the fresh lemon juice icing more than made up for that!

I have felt so full since lunch! I have managed to squeeze a couple of things in though - a mini chocolate flake...

and a Total Greek yoghurt pot with honey...

bizarre though, when I ate one of these 6 weeks ago, the honey was set (I even went back to an old blog post to check the photo here!!) but this time the honey was clear. I preferred the set one :( so think I'll be sticking to adding my own honey into plain Greek yoghurt in future!

I really should have something else to eat otherwise I'll be hungry in the middle of the night, but at the moment I still feel so full and bloated...way too many bread/cake products have been consumed by me today! Worth it as a one-off day, but definitely looking forward to having a smoothie for breakfast tomorrow! :) Hope everyone else has enjoyed the day too, I also managed to fit in a bit of sitting in my Mum's back garden after lunch - loving this sunshine!

Easter Breakfast at the Beach Hut

Happy Easter everyone! Hope you're all having lovely days :) Another 'post while waiting for things in the oven' here - got a batch of lemon poppy seed muffins cooking at the moment, my third and final batch of cakes for the weekend! I'll post photos of those and the cupcakes later though. For now I'm all about breakfast. At the beach hut. In the sunshine. With way too much food!

I took along the batch of banana muffins that I baked last night...

and Mum provided wholemeal hot cross buns, croissants and pain au chocolats...

and fresh fruit...

as well as juice, jam etc.

I started off with a delicious glass of pear & apple juice...

swiftly followed by a banana muffin...

and a hot cross bun...

and a croissant...

Plus unpictured fruit, half another hot cross bun from baby, and most of a rejected pain au chocolat from daughter! Can't believe I ate so much!! I still managed to eat a little chocolate bunny from the mini Easter Egg Hunt daughter and little sister did around the beach hut...

The main Easter Egg Hunt will be later!

Right, off to quickly ice the now-cooled lemon poppy seed muffins, then heading up to Mum's for a buffet lunch. Catch you later! :)