From bunting making to blowing eggs, we get you ready for Easter with our top six seasonal tricks!

It’s Easter, and Spring is really taking hold, so we’ve decided to round up some seasonal Easter tips to soothe your chocolate cravings and indulge in some Easter Cake. It’s with a hop, skip and jump, like the Easter bunny, that we bring you our seasonal tricks we can impart in preparation for Easter, which is falling early this year on March 27th.

Here are our top six seasonal tricks to help you get ready for the Chocolate season!

Make a Simnel Cake

This is a light fruit cake with a layer of marzipan running through the middle, and topped with marzipan, before decorating with eleven balls of marzipan. These balls represent Christ and the apostles, minus Judas who was the bad betrayer! He’s not allowed on top of this seasonal cake! Simnel Cake is a Victorian England invention. Sometimes decorated with fluffy chicks and eggs, as well as the marzipan balls. So if you’re making one, stock up with your dried fruit and candied peel from our good food shops like Urru Culinary Store in Bandon Co. Cork and Country Choice in Nenagh, Co. Tipperary.

Blow a few eggs to paint and decorate

Blowing eggs involves using a clean skewer to carefully make two small holes at the rounded ends of a fresh egg. Next, insert the skewer into the egg through one hole, so as not to break the shell. Twist it around gently, to break up the yolk. This will make the egg easier to remove from the shell. Holding the egg over a bowl, blow hard into one hole to remove the contents. Keep blowing till you’re sure you have all the egg removed. Save the fresh egg to make scrambled eggs or an omelette. Repeat with as many eggs as you have the breath for!!

Wash the empty shells, allowing the water through and drain out the other side. Drain empty eggshells and allow to dry thoroughly. Paint with pastel colour artist’s paints and decorate with different coloured stripes, dots, ribbons round the middle, sequins or whatever takes your fancy. Glue on some coloured ribbon or craft string to make a loop for hanging. Use to decorate branches which you’ve snipped from the garden, as a lovely seasonal touch in the house. Pussy willow looks great with painted eggs hanging from it.

Order your Easter Sunday lamb from the butcher

Easter falls early this year, so new season spring lamb may well be heavily in demand. Order yours now to make sure you have some on the day! Then try this wonderful recipe for Minted Spring Lamb on our recipe listings.

Make some Easter Bunting

This is one for those who like sowing! Search the material section of a department store for pretty remnants which have spring like patterns on them. We especially like pale pink, baby blues and lemon colours, and particularly if they are decorated with a vintage/Easter/ foodie themed print like cupcakes, tarts, wedges of gateau, buns, kitchenware, little chicks, eggs, spots, deckchair stripes, etc. 

You want double sided bunting. So fold a strip of material in half and using a template, cut pointy bunting triangles with two equal long sides and one short side.

When you have your triangles cut, to make one piece of bunting, turn two pieces of material wrong side out and sow together along the long sides, leaving the short side unsown. You now have a triangle of bunting which is inside out. Repeat till you have all the triangles sown, then turn them right side out and iron them nice and flat.  

Then you need to attach your bunting to some cotton wide bias tape with a double-fold, which you will also get from a material shop. Cut the length of tape you want, making sure you leave some spare at the ends for tying on to where you are going to hang it.

Leaving about a foot at each end of the tape, start to attach the bunting triangles by opening the fold in the tape, inserting the short unsown side of one triangle into the fold, then folding the tape back down to cover the edge of material and sowing. Place the next triangle immediately next to the first one and repeat. Do this all the way along your tape.

Voila! There you have your own home made Easter bunting decoration to drape around the house!

Attend an Easter Egg Class

Join our friend Richy Verasawhmy at Richy’s Restaurant and R Cafe, for a brilliant Easter Egg making session. He’s joining forces with a local chocolate company to get you engaged in the whole business of making chocolate eggs. 

Invest in chocolate!

Last and, most importantly, not least! Buy some decent chocolates to give to your friends and relations on Easter Sunday. A lovely touch for a homemade little gift could be as simple as placing four perfect handmade truffles in a little tissue lined box and wrapping it with a ribbon. Or you could choose a large flamboyant egg, or anything in between. Look to our chocolatiers for some guidance here! You won’t beat the quality they offer! Check out our special chocolatiers blog on the subject for details of who makes what and where they are.