What I Cooked and Ate This Easter

I love Easter, dare I say it, even more than Christmas? There’s less anticipation and therefore less pressure. It’s always spread over a long weekend rather than an awkward mid-week Christmas and, if the weather gods are looking down on us appeasingly, can be spent in the garden eating hot cross buns with the sun on your face. The stress-free buildup is filled with chocolate, new season’s asparagus, rhubarb, £1 bunches of daffodils, and the first pub garden pints of the year. It’s a signifier that things are about to get brighter, warmer, happier rather than the long months of a dark, cold winter that still lay waiting ahead of Christmas.

This year was extra lovely because my birthday fell just after the bank holiday weekend which occurs very occasionally. It requires a very late Easter, but when it does happen, the weekend is made extra special and this year I was able to eke out the celebrations just a little longer.

Below is a breakdown of the particularly delicious things I ate over the (very) long weekend:

A birthday pavlova

I had some friends over to my parents house (where I spent the Easter weekend) for an early birthday dinner party because truly, not much brings me more joy than cooking for people, even though it does sometimes feel a bit like a busman’s holiday albeit with a fraction of the stress.

For pudding, I made a toppling tower of rhubarb, strawberry and custard pavlova á la Quo Vadis and it turned out to be everything I had dreamed of and more. I think rhubarb and strawberry is one of my favourite fruity flavour combinations of the spring/summer season and my parents have always grown an abundance of rhubarb in the garden that crops up each year without them having to tend to it much.

I made a compote from the rhubarb by adding some caster sugar, orange zest and juice to a pan, popping the lid on and leaving the rhubarb to break down. I macerated the strawberries in sugar and lemon juice and left them in the fridge for most of the day allowing them to go super sweet and create the brightest red syrup to be drizzled over the pavlova at the end. The custard was your standard recipe except I added a couple of tablespoons of cornflour in with the eggs and sugar so that it held its own amongst all of the fruit and meringue. I finished it with peaks of softly whipped cream, and the only thing missing was a giant sparkler coming out of the top.

Onto Easter Day itself …

Hot cross buns

The recipe was from the River Cottage Handbook no. 3 - Bread, by Daniel Stevens. A really lovely, straightforward recipe and the buns turned out perfectly which is saying a lot, because my relationship with bread making has always been a bit fraught.

Toasted under the grill (because they were too big to fit in the toaster), and slathered with salty butter.

Simnel cake

My mum makes one each year for Easter, but opted for a much less faffy simnel loaf this year. Fruit-studded, with a layer of marzipan running through the middle - look at that cross section!

Chocolate cornflake cakes

My sister made these, adorned with sprinkles and mini eggs for nostalgia’s sake.

Basque Cheesecake

Finally, for Easter Sunday pudding, my mum and I made a basque cheesecake with roasted rhubarb - both of which we failed to photograph. The recipe was from Sift by Nicola Lamb and it’s one of the easiest desserts to make - low effort, (very) high reward.

And of course, roast lamb with all of the trimmings although it was very nearly not *all* the trimmings.

The very first thing my mum said to me on Easter morning was “Phoebe! Phoebe! Phoebe! We haven’t got any potatoes!” !! CODE RED !! She had forgotten to order them on the food delivery (probably because all of our attention was evidently on our excessive number of sweet things) and all we had in the fridge was one lonely, sprouting jacket potato.

Thankfully, for the sake of our roast dinner, we live in an increasingly secular country in which not all shops shut on the holy day. My sister was able to pick up a couple of bags of new potatoes on the way over which was a welcome spring-y addition to our Easter plates (although I’m not sure I would make the permanent swap for a roastie).