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Easter

17th April 2019

Ensure a household of happy bunnies this Easter with help from Garden Square! As well as our eggciting schedule of activities and events, our stores are choc-a-block with tempting treats, spring styles, beauty booty and cracking gadgets.

And with plenty of mouth-watering options in Costa Coffee and Wildwood, celebrating in style is a cinch.

About Easter

Easter is a festival and holiday celebrating the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. It is the culmination of the Passion of Christ, preceded by Lent, a forty-day period of fasting, prayer and penance.

The week prior to Easter is referred to as Holy Week and culminates in Good Friday, commemorating the crucifixion and death of Jesus. In western Christianity, the Easter season begins on Easter Sunday and lasts seven weeks, ending on Pentecost Sunday.

Easter and its related holidays are ‘moveable feasts’, meaning that they do not fall on a fixed date in the Gregorian or Julian calendars, which only follow the cycle of the sun. It has come to be the first Sunday after the full moon that occurs on or soonest after 21st March, but calculations vary in East and West. Easter is linked to the Jewish Passover by much of its symbolism, as well as by its position in the calendar. In many languages, the words for ‘Easter’ and ‘Passover’ are identical or very similar.

Easter customs vary across the Christian world and include visiting church, decorating Easter eggs (a symbol of an empty tomb), Easter egg hunts, Easter parades and exchanging gifts.

Easter Trivia

Some interesting Easter facts:

  • Every child in the UK receives an average of 8 Easter eggs every year – that’s double their recommended calorie intake for a whole week!
  • When eating a chocolate Easter Bunny, 76% of people bite off the ears first, 5% go for the feet and 4% opt for the tail.
  • Households spend an average of £75 on Easter each year.
  • The UK’s first chocolate egg was produced in 1873 by Fry’s of Bristol.

Easter Cookies

Easter is the perfect opportunity to get in the kitchen and create cakes and bakes for family and friends. These simple Easter Cookies from Mary Berry are easy to make with children and are great for Easter treats or to give as gifts.

Ingredients

For the dough

  • 100g/4oz softened butter
  • 75g/3oz caster sugar
  • 1 large free-range egg yolk
  • 200g/7oz plain flour, plus extra for flouring
  • 1/2 level tsp mixed spice
  • 1/2 level tsp ground cinnamon
  • 1-2 tbsp milk

For the icing

  • 1 tsp lemon juice
  • 125g/4½ oz icing sugar
  • About 1 tbsp cold water
  • Different coloured food colouring

Method

  1. Preheat the oven to 180C/350F/Gas 4. Lightly grease two baking trays lined with baking parchment.
  2. Measure the butter and sugar into a bowl and beat together until light and fluffy. Beat in the egg yolk. Sieve in the flour and spices and add enough milk to give a fairly soft dough. Bring together, using your hands, to make a soft dough.
  3. Knead the biscuit dough mixture lightly on a lightly floured work surface. Roll out to a thickness of 5mm/¼ inch. Cut out Easter biscuits using an assortment of shaped cutters, such as bunnies, Easter eggs, chicks and spring flowers.
  4. Lightly grease two baking trays lined with baking parchment.
  5. Place the biscuit shapes on the prepared baking trays and bake in the preheated oven for 10-15 minutes. Remove from the oven and lift onto a wire rack to cool.
  6. To make the icing, pass one teaspoon of lemon juice through a fine sieve, to remove any pips or bits. Mix the icing sugar with the lemon juice, and then add some water, adding it little by little until you have a relatively stiff but smooth icing. Add a splash more sieved lemon juice if necessary.
  7. Divide the icing into separate bowls and mix in food colourings of your choice into the separate bowls of icing, until you achieve the desired shade.
  8. Spoon a little icing into a piping bag and pipe your decorations onto the biscuits. For a smooth finish, you can pipe the outline of your design in the firmer icing, then slacken it down a bit by mixing in a little more water, giving the icing more of a runny consistency, and use this to fill in the designs.

To find more Mary Berry recipes like this, head to The Works and WH Smith in Garden Square.

Happy Easter from everyone at Garden Square!