indoor Tracking

Stores are filled with barnyards of chocolate critters. Enormous piles of pale yellow, green, pink and blue candies lay next to mounds of foil wrapped mini-eggs. Even colossal chocolate eggs are elaborately decorated and gleaming like polished trophies, monuments to the perfection of the art of confection. There’s no mistaking it’s Easter.

Traditional Easter foods reflect this time of year. Breads, cheeses, meats, eggs, dried fruits, nuts and spices were all staples that were readily available year round. This is mainly the reason we see plenty of celebratory breads, cookies and savoury pies as culinary icons for Easter. They’re all creative ways to turn everyday staples into festive foods.

Easter is about everything new, a renewal of life and the season, so I wanted to make something new and different for Easter this year. I don’t have too much time so I searched the Internet and found myself deep into the world of French pastries. I’d love to make croissants, but they’re so time consuming and if they’re not eaten within hours of baking, they begin to taste stale. There were eclairs, Beignets and Gourgere – yum, but again, time consuming. I’d love to spend hours in the kitchen making macarons in pastel Easter colours of pale yellow, green, pink and blue, but again, not enough time. I could make the crunchy and caramelized Palmier, I think they’d be the quickest and easiest with some frozen puff pastry.

I don’t have cannele molds so I used a special deep narrow muffin tin and it worked just fine. While mine might not have the beautiful shape that traditional cannele have, the flavours are superb! Luscious, creamy and rich in vanilla flavours on the inside with a crunchy caramel crunchy bottom, the sides are also caramelized but they’re a bit softer giving the illusion that they’re drizzled in caramel – oh yum!

Instead of rum I used icewine so there was an elegant flavour that fit beautifully with the textures and caramel. I think I’ll use rum next time just to taste the difference.

Easter is one of the biggest holidays and a great time to try something new. I was actually inspired to go down this road because I’d heard of a new Easter egg. There’s a Brazilian beer company called Skol making beer Easter eggs. The beer is reduced and concentrated, mixed with chocolate ganache and it becomes the soft inside to the fat little eggs. I think it’s brilliant!

Of course, here in Niagara we have icewine Easter eggs at Crivellier Chocolate in Niagara Falls. They’ll also personalize a chocolate egg by putting anything you want inside from a gift card to toys or any other personal item you want to give.