Easter Basket Treats

Yes. It is just about now when the Easter Bunny comes bounding down the street to hide the beautifully colored eggs and prepare the colorful and festive Easter baskets for all to enjoy. If you find the eggs and dig through the baskets, you have the makings for a fun filled day. This year, I decided to include some homemade treats into those beautifully crafted baskets. Though they are homemade, I wanted to ensure that whatever I chose would be simple and not time intensive. With simplicity and time-saving on my mind, I found the following treats that were easy and kid friendly.

What could be more simple and quick than baking sugar cookies? They are the staple of all holiday cookie making. But for a change from the standard recipe, I found a sugar cookie recipe with a little spin on it: Cream Cheese Sugar Cookies from Allrecipes.com . Cream Cheese, you say? Yes! I questioned this as well, but I figured why not give it a whirl and wouldn’t you know it they turned out fab-u-lous. That cream cheese gave it an extra zing and created a more chewy cookie. Selecting both a Bunny and Egg shaped cookie cutter, I cut out the cookies, pulled out the silpat, and baked away. After they cooled, I enlisted the help of the crew: my kids, and let them have a blast decorating away. As I was watching the kids decorate, I thought what a cute idea to make a cookie bouquet with them for the Easter basket, but unfortunately I came up with that idea a little too late, but if you would like to try it, I did some research and found some tips on doing this. First you prepare the dough as the recipe specifies, but when you roll out the dough make it a little thicker than usual, between 1/4 and 1/2 inch thick. Then insert the heat-proof sticks (found at your local craft store) into the cookie and refrigerate the dough before cutting and then before baking. To create the cookie bouquet, insert cookies on sticks into Styrofoam and there you have it a cookie bouquet. For more tips, check out the cookie bouquet videos to the left of this article. You can do this in your Easter Basket for a special treat. With this idea you can get creative for any occasion.

The next special treat I prepared for the basket was the Easter Egg Dipper Treats, again compliments of Allrecipes.com. This definitely was a hit with the kids, and seriously, who doesn't love Rice Krispy treats dipped in chocolate? To make the treats: prepare the Rice Krispy treats as directed, but, instead of putting them in a Pyrex dish, take ¼ cup scoops and form into an egg shape. I tried this a couple of different ways and found that the silpat method worked the best. Simply scoop about ¼ cup of the prepared treats onto a silpat, fold over the silpat and shape into the form of an egg. No sticking and no mess. It took me about 15 minutes to prepare 18 eggs, of course with a little “sampling” along the way, yummy. The recipe calls for semi-sweet chocolate but having left over white chocolate bits from another recipe, I chose to use the white chocolate instead and perfection was had. I added some pretty sparkly colored sugars and there you have it: Easter Egg Dippers. I put these on a stick, covered each in a cellophane bag (for freshness) and inserted them into the Easter Basket.

Finally I found a very easy and quite tasty candy recipe: Jellybean Bark from Allrecipes.com, this simple, two ingredient treat was almost gone before I finished the last basket. To make the bark, melt white chocolate morsels in a double boiler pan, spread onto a cookie sheet lined with a silpat (eliminates the sticking), add jelly beans and any other decorations that you think will look good. For my personal touch, I also added colored sugar sprinkles and drizzled on pink colored chocolate for that extra Easter flair. Allow the bark to chill in the refrigerator for about an hour and then crack into smaller pieces. I put the pieces into a decorative cellophane bag and placed into the basket. All of the items for this recipe, except for the jellybeans, I found at my local craft store.

So, in less than 1 hour of total prep and cooking time, I had three homemade treats for a fun and simple Easter basket. You can do these on your own and surprise the kids, or get them involved since these are simple, easy, and fun. It's a great way to get your children involved in the kitchen (my kids loved making these homemade baskets for Grandma and Grandpa). But more importantly, these recipes allow you to be creative and add your own personal touch to Easter.