A quick treat for Easter!

Nolan and I have our bags packed for the weekend. We're driving all the way to Tennessee to spend a couple days at Gatlinburg. I used to go to Dollywood a lot when I was a kid, when my family lived in Indiana and Kentucky and it was just a couple hours away. This trip will be around 8 hours and we'll switch back and forth (though I'm sure Nolan will do most of the driving). 

We won't be home for Easter, but that's nothing new. Instead, we all got together for my mother's birthday this week and enjoyed the time we have together. 

But if we did stay home for Easter weekend, I'm sure I would have to pull a rabbit-shaped Peep out of my hat, because I have been LAZY lately with baking! So here's a simple, easy, non-recipe for a Peep-flavored milkshake for you to sip with your nieces and nephews and the love of your life this weekend!

Easy Peasy Peepshake

Directions: For two small cups or one large milkshake, blend together 1/2 cup of heavy whipping cream, 1/2 cup marshmallow fluff, 1 cup of vanilla ice cream, 1 teaspoon vanilla extract, and 1/2 tablespoon sprinkles! And that's it!

Hot Cross Buns for Easter: In Partnership with Red Star Yeast

So suddenly the winter’s gone and the salt-stained boots lying in the mudroom are the only indication it ever stopped by at all. Without invitation, Spring trespassed on the cold mornings, stretched her arms and I kept my windows open to greet her. A lot has happened in six months and this persephonic heat wave doesn’t remember any of it. And I thank her for that.

I’m drinking my coffee on the porch these days, a blanket and a dog on my lap. I take my time. I don’t wear cologne these days, all my clothes smell like the breeze. A finch sat on the porch swing last night and didn’t seem to notice me. I’m enjoying the times I get to be invisible. A truck broke down a mile from my house; but I just kept driving.

This week is almost Easter and that, too, crept up on me. I haven’t celebrated in a few years—I let life get the best of me and was too busy trying to forget about others. We’re celebrating early, my parents are driving to their house in North Carolina and my sister works the weekend shift now. We’re meeting at a truck stop and eating at a diner. My dad says I can order anything I want on the menu, he’s just happy to have me home now. My mom apologizes for the last-minute choice, but the candy store’s busy and she’s too tired to cook when she gets home. I say it’s all fine because it really is. As long as I’m with them, I’m happy.

But I kept one tradition going this year, to keep the memories of cellophane grass and hollow chocolate bunnies alive. I made hot cross buns for tomorrow, for Good Friday. I made these for every tradition I thought I forgot, for every year I thought I could leave them all behind. I’ll give a few to my sister and her husband and pack the rest in a basket for my mom and dad. It may not be much, but it’s all I can give. It’s been a long six months of winter for me.

Coconut-Roasted Carrot Hot Cross Buns with Pineapple Ginger Icing

Yields 12-18 buns

Ingredients for the Roasted Carrot Puree:

• 5-8 carrots, cleaned
• 3 tablespoon coconut oil, melted
• 1/4 cup brown sugar, packed
• 1/2 tablespoon olive oil
• 1/4 teaspoon black pepper
• 1/4 teaspoon salt

Directions for the Roasted Carrot Puree

1. Preheat oven to 425*F and prepare a pan with aluminum foil
2. Lay carrots on foiled pan, spread out
3. In a small measuring cup, whisk coconut oil, sugar, olive oil, pepper, and salt
4. Pour mixture over carrots and stir with a wooden spoon to coat
5. Roast for 25-35 minutes or until browned, tender, and a little caramelized
6. Let cool and puree in a food processor

Ingredients for Coconut-Roasted Carrot Hot Cross Buns:

• 2 cups water, warm to the touch
• 5 teaspoons Red Star Active Dry Yeast
• 1/2 cup white sugar, packed
• 1 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup roasted carrot puree (above)
• 1 egg
• 2 tablespoons softened butter
• ½ tablespoon of orange zest
• 4 1/2-6 cup AP flour 

Directions for Coconut-Roasted Carrot Hot Cross Buns:

1. In the bowl of a stand mixer, fitted with a paddle attachment, add water, sugar, salt, and yeast. Let sit for five minutes until foamy
2. Add egg, puree, orange zest, and butter. Turn mixer on low to mix all ingredients together
3. Keeping the mixer on, begin adding flour, one cup at a time. Keep adding flour until dough begins to stick away from sides of bowl (if you add too much flour and dough becomes "sandy", add a small amount of water or milk to reconstitute)
4. Turn out onto a floured work surface and knead for 3-5 minutes until springy
5. Place in a well-oiled bowl, turning once. Cover with a towel and let sit for an hour in a warm, dry place until doubled in size. 
6. Turn back out onto floured surface and punch down slightly. Cut into 12 or 18 equal pieces and place well-oiled pan
7. Cover with a towel and allow to rise for 20 minutes
8. While rising, preheat oven to 350*F
9. Bake for 25-32 minutes or until golden brown on top.
10. Allow to cool slightly before icing tops of crosses

Ingredients for Pineapple Ginger Icing:

• 4 oz cream cheese, softened
• ½ teaspoon ground ginger
• 2 tablespoon pineapple juice
• 2 cups confectioner’s sugar

Directions for Pineapple Ginger Icing:

1. In the bowl of a stand mixer, fitted with a whisk attachment, mix cream cheese, ginger, and pineapple juice on medium-high until well incorporated
2. With mixer reduced to a medium-low speed, begin adding confectioner’s sugar, a half-cup at a time until icing is a desired viscosity with no lumps
3. Spoon icing into a piping bag and pipe crosses onto buns
4. Allow to sit for two minutes
5. Enjoy!

Thank you to Red Star Yeast for sponsoring this post. I believe in using quality products when it comes to baking and I am always confident my dough will rise beautifully with Red Star! Check out the active dry yeast I used for this recipe and others on their website, follow them on instagram and like their Facebook!

And while you're at it...like my Facebook and Instagram too!

Easter Sunday.

It was 1998 and I was seven.  We visited my grandmother's grave for the first time.  In a rippling field, in a small valley in Indiana.   Forty-five minutes from Cincinnati and silent as a lamb.  I held my mother's hand, dressed in paisley and wearing a clip-on tie from the dollar store, we watched the barley sway when we breathed and tears splashed on my hand, having slid unchecked down my mother's cheek.

It was Easter Sunday then, and we were driving past after an egg hunt and it wasn't intentional to stop, but we did.  We stopped and held our breath when we recognized the name, etched into stone.  It was nondescript, Norma's grave, and it was us who gave it any significance.  It had stood there since 1980 and was probably going to still be there for a hundred years.  That's the thing about Indiana--even the most dead things there have a more cast-iron constitution than anything living in California.  Salt of the earth, you could die from their kindness.

My pockets filled with gold foil chocolate coins, clanging with change in broken plastic eggs, meticulously counted and stashed in my breast pocket, that was the Easter I knew there was heartache.  I could read it on my mother's face.  The only thing Protestant about my mother was her work ethic, everything else was superstition to this woman.  But she was wondering, bartering, trying to make sense of it.  If Jesus came back, why hasn't she?

They're both nameless, God and Norma, and that's the only thing they have in common.  We call her "your mom" when addressing my own.  It's an alienation of propriety to call her "grandma", even if we wanted to.  Instead, my siblings and I sit and wait to hear any recollected memories of her from our mother.  We know she liked As the World Turns and her husband was a drunk, that she liked peanut butter and was poor as dirt.  But every Easter, I can't help but think of this woman, this shadow of ourselves, laying in the ground somewhere east of the Mississippi, and how she never even knew I existed.

And I thought of her this week.  I made a prayer to the sky, to God and to her in heaven.  I made a prayer to the gemstones I keep in a satchel, her body part of the ground now.  I wanted to cover all my bases.  I wanted to thank her for her work, to tell her that I like peanut butter, that I know what it's like to be dirt poor.  I wanted to relate to this woman.  And I just couldn't.

So instead I worked.  I wake up at five thirty now, to ensure greeting guests and supervising the breakfast hour.  It was busy for a holiday, which kept me there until dinner time.  I drove home on an empty road and found Nolan and the dogs outside on the patio, music playing and eyes sleepy from the sunlight.  Ham was waiting, potato salad made, eggs boiled.  It was all done, done for me, with nothing to worry about but myself.

And so we ate.  We ate and laid on the couch, lounging in akimbo postures to accommodate two dogs on our ikea Kivik couch, bought when it was just us.  It was peaceful, it was easy.  I called my parents and they had dinner at Bob Evans, dessert at a local shack that serves ice cream just up the road from my old high school.  I said I was sorry I couldn't be home for the holiday, she said she was sorry the card was going to be late.  It was easy to forget all she did do for me, but even easier to forgive a late card here or there.  My mother works as a candy maker now, so Easter entails 13 hour days for her; no apologies needed. 

But for us, in our tiny house in San Diego, we snacked on bread, took alternating naps, and wished tomorrow wouldn't come, so we wouldn't have to go back to work ever again.

These were naturally-dyed eggs made from coffee (the brown ones), paprika (yellow), and grape juice (grey-purple). I love the rusticity of their coloring and the way they feel like home.