Easter giveaways 2007

Even though the weather is not cooperating, it is spring and today is Easter! That should mean it will begin to warm up soon and get out of this cold snap! Hopefully you dressed warm if you had to go outside to look for eggs!

We made 9 new recipes this week - we had a few favorites and they were the Whole Wheat Pasta Salad with Walnuts and Feta Cheese, Lemon Meringue Pie Cupcakes, Black and White Angel Food Cake, and the Spinach-Feta Calzone Casserole.

We did happen to make a couple Easter treats to share with the neighbors - one new and one repeat that we just had to make again from last year. Jeff said there was no way we were letting the holiday go by without making this Easter Biscotti again.

Yes, it is not very traditional for biscotti, but it is surprisingly good and it is a fun colorful treat! This year we used LifeSavers jelly beans which brought lots of different flavors... my favorite bite was when I got a duo mixture of pineapple and lemon! The only other thing we did different was to add some light green sanding sugar on top before they went into the oven for the first time.

The bunny is feeling very generous today and would like to share with you too!

We also wanted to make some small individual cheesecakes - but these have a surprise inside! I started out by making a graham cracker base, made simply from cracker crumbs, sugar and melted butter, and pressed them into my mini cheesecake pan. I probably went a bit high up the sides, but I love crusts on cheesecake! Once we gave them a quick pre-bake, we set a small Rolo candy (it is a chocolate candy with a soft caramel inside) on top of each individual crust. I then quickly mixed up a basic vanilla cheesecake base and we decided to divide the batter and tint one a light blue and one a light yellow just to be a little more festive.

Don't wander too far when these go in the oven - they only took around 15 minutes to bake; you want them to be set... but still a little jiggly in the center if you gently shake the pan. If you don't have a mini cheesecake pan, you can use a regular muffin tin - just line them with papers so they will be easy to pull out of the pan.

We were going to do some colored coconut on top for a nest, but we wanted the two colors to show up on top - so we just placed a few malted milk candy eggs on top! Perfect as individual sized treats, these cheesecakes were velvety smooth and creamy - the chocolate candy hidden inside kept it shape well and added a rich unique surprise.

Recipes
Easter Biscotti
Mini Easter Cheesecakes With A Chocolate Caramel Surprise