Easter's Coming

We don't 'celebrate' Easter, but we have always done the Easter egg giving and the hot cross bun gobbling that is inseparable from thoughts of Easter.  One thing I would look forward to over all others was Cadbury Cream Eggs.  They were delicious and sickly and stickily sweet.  Why do I speak of them in past tense, you ask?  Well, because, since Cadbury decided making an even bigger profit was more important than continuing well loved lines.  They also decided to put palm oil in their chocolate, a move that backfired on them and lead to their removing it and going back to the old recipe.  But after that, we very rarely ever eat Cadbury chocolate, and have moved to Whittiker's, a New Zealand owned and New Zealand made chocolate I'm sure I have babbled on about before.

So, you can imagine my excitement when I saw this post at Not Martha, that lead to this post at Not Without Salt, that offered the possibility of recreating a favourite yummy at home.  Of course I forgot that cream eggs outside of New Zealand aren't gooey and sticky...  But this is a great alternative.  Now I'm inspired to figure out how to make the New Zealand version, but don't expect that this year!  I think I will try making chocolate hot cross buns this year.  Mum tried a recipe a few years ago that we agreed was not very nice - way too yeasty for our taste.  Our new (Dame) Alison and Simon Holst bread book has a recipe for them.

But for the moment, I am making Mum a birthday cake.  Sounds straightforward, right?  Well, if you know me, you know I can't do anything in a straightforward manner.  So, I decided that I had seen somewhere a tiramisu cake, with sponge cake layered with mascarpone coffee cream.  But I couldn't remember where I'd seen it, and a search of the internet didn't really bring up what I wanted, so I'm putting four different recipes together to make one cake.  Edmond's cookbook sponge, ladies' fingers from Joy of Baking, traditional tiramisu from Epicurious, and (because I wanted to be fancy) the oreo truffles recipe from Chocolate and Carrots that worked SO well last time.  How will all of these go together?  Just wait and see...  Also, don't tell my Mum, it's a surprise.  No, she doesn't read my blog.  Yes, I know, she IS mean.  I agree.