Rice Krispies Easter eggs

I really wasn't planning on making any Easter treats this year.  I was content to munch on my little bags of Cadbury mini eggs and to just stockpile Easter goodies (for my son, of course...) from Target.  But then I watched The Pioneer Woman's Easter episode and saw the rice krispies eggs.  Since I had about half a box of the cereal sitting in the pantry, I just couldn't resist!  

The Pioneer Woman stuffed a Cadbury mini egg - those delicious little chocolate eggs ubiquitous at Easter - inside each of her krispy eggs and since I love any excuse to buy and eat more of those crispy, creamy, dreamy chocolate eggs, I was all for it. But then I was telling my husband about my plans and he had a funny idea.  Why not stuff a Cadbury creme egg (he's the creme egg lover in the family) inside instead? Then, you've really got the whole egg theme going.  I think he thought that's what I meant in the first place when I was describing the project but after he said it, it seemed such a hysterical idea that I had to try it.

So I did and you can see what I ended up with!  Those eggs totally cracked me up (haha...corny joke alert).  We all had a good giggle out of these creme-egg-within-an-egg eggs!

Besides the creme eggs, I did make a bunch of rice krispies eggs filled with a mini chocolate egg inside and also a few with some classic M&M's tucked into them too.  I was a little worried about the rice cereal setting before I had time to mold each of them around the plastic egg but it really wasn't a problem if you work relatively quickly.  Being rather impatient and given that fear of the cereal setting up, I started with large plastic egg molds before switching to a few smaller ones.  I think the smaller ones look a bit more realistic but the larger ones make quick work of it. 

I had a good time whipping these eggs up.  These tasty little eggs, with their chocolaty surprise inside, are just plain fun.  

Tri-color cookie (Easter) cake

Tri-color cookies, or Italian rainbow cookies, have to be one of our top five favorite sweets.  My family and I are seriously crazy about them!  No Christmas is complete without at least one, or more likely 2 or 3 batches of it.  We're talking three layers of almond sponge cake joined together by apricot preserve, encased in dark chocolate.  It's a heavenly combination.  We're such fans I've turned them into mini cupcake bites and now, we can have it in cake form, too!

Tri-color cookies, then cupcakes bites, and now cake too!

Given our love of those cookies, you can imagine my interest when I spied this recipe for "Italian Rainbow Cookie Cake" on Joanne's Eats Well With Others blog.  The post I happened to be looking at was for another lovely cake but it was the rainbow cookie cake that popped up at the end of the post, in the 'related recipes' section, that caught my eye.  I knew I had to make it!

I couldn't possibly wait until Christmastime to try it out.  I know I don't really need a reason to make any cake but thinking of the colors (I was actually aiming for pastel hues but the colors baked up deeper than I expected), I thought I'd pretend to be seasonal and call it an Easter cake.  I added some white chocolate shavings and nestled a few Cadbury mini eggs on top.  To me, once something has a few Cadbury mini eggs on it, it just screams: "Easter!"  They're the first thing I buy when Easter treats start appearing at the stores.  So I hope you'll play along and indulge me on this loose Easter theme.

I made this recently as a little surprise for my fellas (my husband and the little one).  I knew they'd love it and after tasting it, we were all thrilled.  It is literally tri-color/rainbow cookie in cake form!  As you'd expect, it's fluffier and thicker than the cookie (which is really not a cookie...but that's another discussion) and more importantly, the flavor is very much the same.  I've been partial to making smaller 6-inch cakes lately and this one is another example (though my family would've welcomed a 9-inch with this one).  This could very well be the first 3-layer cake I've ever made and, miraculously, I actually had three 6-inch round cake pans so I was able to bake the layers all at once!

Texture and flavor wise, this cake is as it should be - a moist sponge cake that has a lot of body and almond flavor thanks to almond paste.  I use apricot preserve (heated then strained so it's smooth), rather than a combination of apricot preserve and raspberry jam because my family and I are partial to it here. I tried to pack as much of the preserve in the cake as possible since we love the flavor it adds. That got me thinking about possibly baking the batter into two layers next time but splitting the 2 layers into 4 so that we'd have another layer of preserve!  I can call it a quad-layer rainbow cake, maybe?  That might be over-complicating things but I want to make it happen...

I like to use strained apricot preserves - and lots of it - between the layers of this almond cake

This cake is encased in one of my favorite things: chocolate ganache. But because of a higher chocolate to cream ratio, the chocolate ganache is somewhat firmer (so you get more of a shell) than typical ganache frosting you'd use for a cake.  That's just spot on here because it replicates that hard shell/snap I know and love from a good tri-color cookie.

You can probably tell I've discovered a new favorite cake!