Easter Brunch!

The day before Easter, Cookie Monster and I joined my family for some good ol' egg dyeing at my mom's house. We dyed eggs, ate brunch and had an Easter egg hunt. For people over 30. It was awesome.

Anyhoo, this is one of Cookie Monster's eggs. Fight on! (For anyone who does not know what this phrase means, please see me after class.)
On actual Easter morning, it was just Cookie Monster and me. I wanted to make something special, so I turned to my Better Homes and Gardens cookbook. I like this book because its recipes are classics.

In the bread section there was a recipe for Nun's Puffs, which are essentially cream puffs with no filling. They are very reminiscent of the tea ring my mom makes, without fail, every Christmas morning. Because I make her.

The dough for the Nun's Puffs is essentially a pate a choux dough.


Here it is!
1/2 cup butter
1 cup milk (I used nonfat)
3/4 cup all-purpose flour (I used whole wheat because that's all we have)
4 eggs
1 tablespoon sugar Honey (optional) (I did not option for this)

Grease twelve 2 1/2 inch muffin cups, including the edge and around the top of each cup; set aside (I used my handy-dandy silicone muffin tin, but still greased it with nonstick spray). In a medium saucepan, melt butter; add milk. Bring to boiling. Add flour all at once, stirring vigorously. Cook and stir until mixture forms a ball that does not separate. Remove from heat; cool for 5 minutes. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating for one minute with a wooden spoon after each addition or until smooth. Divide dough evenly among prepared muffin cups, filling cups about two-thirds full; sprinkle with sugar (I'm pretty sure I forgot to do this). Bake in a 375 oven about 30 minutes or until golden brown and puffy. Remove from pan. Serve immediately. If desired, serve with honey.

I desired to serve them with homemade raspberry jam (made by my mother-in-law) and lemon curd.

They were really yum! Light and fluffy (though not quite as fluffy as I'd hoped), they really did taste like a cream puff outside. With the jam, they were the perfect amount of sweet.


Trader Joe's provided us with some lovely mimosa-like beverage for a Sunday morning. It was pretty much a peach mimosa in a glass--peach flavored champagne. Normally this kind of stuff is too sweet for me, but it just had a nice peachy flavor and didn't go nuts with the sugar. Cuz' don't be maskin' the taste o' my booze.



See the pretty tulips in the background? And our wedding champagne glasses?


Purrty flowers! Trader Joe's has such a beautiful selection of fresh flowers, and they are all so reasonably priced. I think this bunch of gorgeous tulips was $4.99.


Here's the spread I put together. I made some bacon for Cookie Monster (aww ... who the hell am I kidding? I cooked the shit out of it so I could have some too. This is how I like my bacon--petrified.) I also made some fruit salad to round things out. It included apple, blueberries, bananas and not-yet-ripe mango, which was kinda crunchy but still ok. Though I definitely prefer my mango soft.
But nothing else. ;)



All together. It was a lovely Easter brunch!