Healthy Food: Easter Bunny

Sunday, March 4, 2012

Making a kids Garden Octopus and Isabelle's first Easter Bunny (3 Mar 2012)

Creative food fun for the kids

A casual lunch catchup with friends who have three young kids gets the creative juices flowing in trying to come up with a fun yet healthy dish for them. A quick search online comes across the Garden Octopus by Disney Family Fun. Very easy to make with capsicum, some dip and sliced black olives — make sure it has eight legs of course. We also some mushrooms so I came up with a Garden Centipede made with half cut button mushrooms, some dip, capsicum for the legs and sliced black olives for the eyes. The kids loved it and enjoyed eating them as well. Baby Isabelle was on board and is now 12 weeks and 3 days. She received her first ever Cadbury Chocolate Easter Bunny. Check out how their smiles match! It looks like Mommy and Daddy will have to look after this one for her until she's older — if it lasts that long.

Garden Octopus

Garden Centipede — would work well on a long platter

Isabelle meets the Cadbury Chocolate Easter Bunny — matching smiles

Thursday, April 21, 2011

Easter hunt: So whose got the biggest chocolate bunny in Sydney? (21 Apr 2011)

Bad Boy Bunny

Today I went on a hunt for the largest available chocolate Easter egg or bunny I could find in the CBD. Lindt on Martin Place was in a bit of a frenzy with many sized Gold Bunnies on display in their hundreds. The largest I could find was the Lindt Gold Bunny 500g ($38.95) but I believe there are supposed to be 1 kg versions which I didn't see — perhaps all sold out? The small Darrell Lea Chocolate shop on George Street always feels a bit crowded to me and todays line up out the door made it especially so. There wasn't any really big ones available but the Darrell Lea Bart Simpson Chocolate Face ($10.90, 200g) looked like it would be a lot of fun for the kids and young at heart. Haigh’s Chocolates at Strand Arcade had the biggest lineup outside, they always seem to during this time of year. I didn't have the patience nor time to lineup and enter but spotted a Haigh’s Chocolates Filled Dark Egg in the window ($48.50, 175g) which seemed to be one of their biggest and most expensive options.

On to David Jones which seemed to have the largest assortment of Easter chocolates on display. Here stood two of the biggest and most expensive Hillier's Milk Chocolate King Rabbit ($249, 2.8kg) and I spotted a third one around at the lower ground Elizabeth Street Store chocolate area opposite Max Brenner. While I was perusing the store a chap picked one up for purchase — now there's going to be one very happy spoilt kid this weekend, or family of 8 who'll need to help finish the beast. Although it's not as big as the 6 kg chocolate egg I saw last year at Georgiou's Confectionary. Venturing back through town hall Woolworths there didn't seem to be anything of the impressive size but I fondly remember receiving those colourful wrapped Bunnies ($2.98, 170g) when I was a kid. If bananas are too expensive for you then maybe the Candylishus Bananas ($7.48, 530g) will do the trick for now. Coles on George Street had only a small section left of Easter chocolates. There were only a few Cadbury Giant Egg ($30, 700g) left but plenty of bags of Cadbury Egg Bag Selections ($7.98, 250g) which are generally a popular choice amongst the office givers. Finally a quick stop through the Colonial Priceline under the 7 News building on Martin Place. All their Easter stock had sold out and only a handful of Chocolatier No Added Sugar Egg ($6.99, 100g) remained.