Easter Baking

Just a few pictures:



First, hot cross buns for Good Friday. The recipe is from epicurious, though I skipped their pastry crosses (I'm going to make pastry just to decorate buns? I don't think so!) and used Nigella's simple flour/water/sugar instead. (Basically a paste of equal parts flour and water and then a quarter as much superfine sugar.) Worked like a charm. The buns are fine, they reheat better in the microwave than the toaster, and next time I will shape them more. (OK, if you want to recreate this exactly, I also substituted dried cranberries for the golden raisins and used meyer lemon zest instead of orange zest.)




Then, simple lemon cake. This is Donna Hay's, and she says nothing about it (she says nothing about anything), but I figured with sour cream and lemon it was hard to go wrong. It's a very good, very easy cake. I served it, as you can maybe see here, with raspberry coulis (one package frozen, thawed raspberries in the blender, then pushed through a sieve) and whipped cream. Mmmm.




Finally, Nigella's easter egg nest cake. Isn't it pretty? It really is. It's a flourless cake with a whipped cream/chocolate filling. But, you know? Not to complain or anything--it was fine, but I've made better cakes. I might use the technique again with a different cake. This one's a teensy bit dry, so it really needs that whipped cream filling, and some of the extra raspberry didn't go amiss, either.

Oh, and I forgot to take pictures of the strata or the roasted vegetables. My dinner guests burst into spontaneous applause at the end of the meal, though, so I think it came out all right. (Well, the wine was also quite good...)