Excuse Me Waiter, There’s Somebunny in My Easter Basket…

Johanna, The Passionate Cook is hosting this month’s Waiter, There’s Something In My… and has chosen Easter Basket as the theme. I felt like making some pretty coloured Easter eggs to fill my basket with but instead of chocolates I was going to undertake the ever daunting task of caramel making. I was armed with a wonderful recipe from Helene of Tartelette for Salted Butter and Chocolate Caramels and was ready to take on my nemesis. I wish I could rave to you about my success, but as you can see in the above pictures, my basket is not full of caramels. However, this is the closest I have ever come to succeeding at making caramel, sadly, I still failed. I was intending for my caramel to be a firm, not an ice cream topping. But I didn’t cook the caramel long enough for it to set firmly and be cut and wrapped individually, so it was gooey. On any other occasion, I would have been thrilled with a rich, thick oozy caramel that melted in my mouth, but not when I was trying for firm caramels to be eaten as candy. Despite the fact that this caramel was not exactly what I was looking for, I still ate way too much of it with a spoon. While doing so, I realized that unless I wanted a very gooey Easter basket, I would have to find something else to fill it with. I had a bunch of brown and fragrant bananas sitting on the counter so I decided on Banana-Date Muffins, topped with caramel. This improved on an otherwise naked muffin, but still left me with a lot of extra caramel. Don’t worry though, it’s going into another project which will be revealed soon…

As for the coloured eggs, I started by blowing out their innards. In theory, this is quite easy; you just take a needle and poke little holes in both ends and then blow. It’s not hard per se, but it’s also not something you want to do a lot of. After five eggs I was weak in the knees and started seeing stars. It was at that point that I decided five was more than enough. I mixed up some food colouring, water and vinegar and set about dyeing my eggs. The process did not go as smoothly as I expected. Hollow eggs float. This meant for a lot of poking my fingers into dye. I think my fingers ended up more colourful than the eggs. The bunny liked them though. Hoppy, hoppy, hoppy.

Banana-Date Muffins (Adapted from Cooks.com)

1 c. all bran cereal
1/4 c. milk
3 mashed ripe bananas
1 c. all purpose flour
1/4 c. whole wheat flour
1/4 c. sugar
1 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
2/3 c. chopped pitted dates
2 eggs
4 tbsp. melted butter
1 tsp. vanilla

Heat oven to 400 degrees. Grease 12 cup muffin tin or line tin with cupcake liner. In a small bowl combine bran with milk and bananas. Set aside and let stand for 5 minutes.

In another bowl stir together flour, sugar, baking soda, salt and dates. Beat eggs, butter and vanilla into bran mixture and add to dry ingredients. Stir just until flour is moistened. (Butter will be bumpy.) Spoon into muffin cups. Bake 20 minutes or until golden.

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WTSIM + Waiter There’s Something In My + Muffins + Easter