The week was a whirlwind filled with new menu planning, Easter shopping. mountains of laundry, and trying to create a white tornado through our house, while two tiny tornadoes following behind me creating new projects for mommy! I had spent the first half of the week in Florida and the second half of my week was spent playing catch-up on life and preparing for an Easter brunch for the family. It was one of those years where Easter sneaked up on me, but it all still came together beautifully.
For our Easter brunch, we dined on our favorite breakfast casserole, a beautiful batch of bunny bread, coffee, orange juice, and fresh fruit. If you haven’t tried those recipes, I would highly recommend them because they are always a hit in our house.
One new activity we did try this year was the Kool-Aid (or in our case the Mixade) dying technique that was highlighted in our notebook. I had an egg dying kit, leftover from last year, that I thought I might pull out if the eggs did not turn out. Lucky for us, every single color looked gloriously bright and I was so surprised how quickly the colors took to the shell, literally seconds after being dropped into the colored mixture.
We did do one cup of cold water to one packet of color and experimented with blue, green, purple, and red. We also broke out the rubber bands to create the pretty striping on the eggs. They all turned out beautifully! They were so beautiful, in fact, that I plan to do it this way every year and save myself the hassle of buying egg kits. After all, there is always a rainbow of drink packets on hand in our house for our favorite summertime treat… homemade slushies. Yum!
After the eggs have been dyed, I put them in the fridge to make deviled eggs for our Easter dinner. It is one of those little things I love to do and I love to break out my little egg plate for this occasion.
My little egg plate was a $.50 find at our local Goodwill. I look forward to using it every year and this year was no exception. It is one of those little things that is worth the bit of pantry space that it takes to store every year.
Deviled Eggs (Courtesy of The America’s Test Kitchen Family Cookbook)
7 large eggs, cold
3 tablespoons mayonnaise
1 1/2 teaspoons cider vinegar
3/4 teaspoon grainy mustard (I used some Dijon Mustard instead)
1/4 teaspoon Worcestershire
Salt & Pepper
Place the eggs in a medium saucepan, cover with water, and bring to a boil over high heat. Remove from the heat immediately, cover, and let stand for ten minutes. Transfer the eggs to a bowl of ice water and cool for five minutes. Peel the eggs and slice each in half lengthwise (I did mine in half to make them more of an appetizer-style). With a small spoon scoop the yolks into a bowl, add the mayo, vinegar, mustard, and Worcestershire and mash with a rubber spatula until smooth. Season with salt and pepper. Arrange the egg white halves on a serving platter, discarding the two worst looking ones (if you have any that look bad). Using a pastry bag fitted with a large star tip or a plastic bag, pipe the yolk mixture attractively into the whites. Serve at room temperature. I then sprinkled with a tiny bit of flat leaf parsley and a little paprika to top!