An Easter Menu topped with Carrot Cake
Easter—it is a very special day, for it is when we take time to really reflect on the fact that God came to earth as a man, lived a sinless life, and then died on the cross to pay the price for my sins. Spring is usually in full force by Easter, with all the flowers freshly blooming, gardens beginning to grow, trees putting on new leaves, and new born animals being born all around us. Yes, it is proper that spring and Easter should happen around the same time—for both are all about New Birth. The world is dead from winter, but becomes alive in Spring, and we are dead in our sins, but when we repent of them we become alive in Christ—because the grave could not hold Him, and He is Alive Forever more preparing a home in heaven for His people.
This Easter everyone had to stay home and find new ways to celebrate Easter instead of going to church, attending a sunrise service, getting together with family, and enjoying a meal with friends and family. With no where to go, we leisurely got our chores done and then my friend Lydia and I headed to the garden to harvest some carrots—for a Carrot Cake was on the menu for our Easter Dinner. Before we headed to the kitchen we listened to an Easter sermon, and some Easter singing—and then it was time to create a mouth watering meal out of a few simple ingredients.
First on the list to bake was a Carrot Cake—for it must cool before we could frost it. I have made this carrot cake for over 30 years, and it never gets old. It is moist and luscious, light and fluffy, tasty and healthy. I have used many types of flour. When we could eat grain, I would always grind my grain fresh. Now that we are grain free, I use Cassava flour. My favorite sweetener to use is Rapadura sugar, but you can use Sucanat, honey, or maple syrup just fine. As to the icing—nothing is better than a Cream Cheese Frosting.
CARROT CAKE
3 cups of grated carrots, raw (set aside)
1/2 cup of chopped walnuts (set aside)
Mix the following ingredients together and set aside.
2 cups flour—if grinding your own grain, grind 1 1/3 cup of grain to make 2 cups of flour. (Handy tip: 2/3 cup of grain equals 1 cup of flour) For a gluten free alternative use half millet and half buckwheat.
1 1/2 cups of Rapadura (Sucanat) sugar—Delete if using honey or maple syrup
2 tsp. baking powder
2 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. salt
3 tsp. cinnamon
Cream the following ingredients:
4 eggs
1 1/2 cups of oil
1 cup Honey or maple syrup—Delete if using sugar
Add the dry ingredients to the egg/oil mixture and beat well.
Stir in the carrots and the walnuts, and then pour into 3 greased, 9-in layer pans.
Bake at 350 F for 20 to 25 minutes OR pour into cupcake papers and bake for 20 minutes.
Cool on wire racks, and then layer and icing.
Enjoy!
CREAM CHEESE FROSTING
Blend together:
8 oz. cream cheese, or yogurt cheese
1/4 cup honey
1/4 cup butter, softened
1 tsp. vanilla extract or you can use 1 tsp. lemon juice
This recipe makes enough icing to put between the layers, and on top of the cake. If you want to thoroughly icing the cake, make a double batch.
Once our cake was baking in the oven, we began stage two of our Easter Dinner. We were not able to get the lambs to the butcher in time for Easter, but I did manage to find some lamb riblets buried in the freezer. The recipe I use is based on the lamb riblet recipe in the Grassfed gourmet cookbook by Shannon Hayes.
LAMB RIBLETS
In a large Ziploc bag add:
3 tablespoons of olive oil
2 tablespoons of brown mustard
1 teaspoon of marjoram
2 teaspoons of coarse salt
some freshly ground pepper
2 cloves garlic, crushed
Mix it together and then add in your lamb riblets. Seal the bag real good (or when you go to coat your meat, you will coat the counter as it all pours out—don’t ask me how I know!) and then rotate the meat around in the bag to thoroughly coat every side of the riblets. Then place it on a lined baking sheet and bake at 350 F for 1 hour. Flip the riblets half way through the baking time. To give the riblets the finished touch, I place them under the broiler for 3 minutes with the fat side up. Then they are ready to cut apart with scissors and eat, and be prepared to get a little messy for they are finger licking good.
Now that the meat was cooking, it was time to get the stuffed eggs going. If you are like me, you have always had trouble getting your farm fresh eggs to peel nicely. Usually the white comes off with the shell in chunks. Well, this year I was given a new cookbook called The Prairie Homestead Cookbook, in it Jill Winger tells how to make the perfect peeled hard boiled eggs. If you don’t have the cookbook—of which I think is a must for any cook, you can watch her on YouTube here. She does an excellent job of explaining it, and her method is perfect. Once you have your eggs perfectly peeled, it is time to stuff them.
STUFFED EGGS
Cut your eggs in half length wise, and remove the yolk. Put all your egg yolks in a bowl, and mix together with:
a little mayonnaise
a little yellow mustard
some chopped dill pickles
salt and pepper
You do not want your mixture very wet, or very dry—just nice and creamy. Then you fill your egg white holes with the egg yolk mixture and sprinkle a little paprika on top.
While the first of our sweet potato crop was eaten around Thanksgiving, the last of our stored sweet potatoes we enjoyed for Easter. I always cook them in butter, but I alternate between seasoning them with apples and cinnamon, or pineapple and ginger. For Easter I wanted pineapple and ginger, but when I opened the can of pineapple it made a loud POP! Therefore we were a little concerned that it was bad, so we fed it to the chickens and I grabbed an apple and some cinnamon.
SCRUMPTIOUS SWEET POTATOES
4 tablespoons of butter
3 peeled and thinly sliced sweet potatoes
1/2 tsp. cinnamon or 1/2 tsp. ground ginger
1 chopped apple or 1/2 cup of chopped pineapple with 1/8 cup of pineapple juice
1/4 cup maple syrup
1/2 tsp. salt
Place in a pot, and cook on medium until the sweet potatoes begin to soften. Then turn down to medium low and continue to cook until sweet potatoes are cooked. Stir often! It takes about 20 minutes.
The final touch to finish up our Easter Dinner was a FRESH GARDEN SALAD. How thankful I was that I had washed up a head of Nevada lettuce a few days earlier, and all we had to do was add a Kyoto red carrot, a sweet Vidalia onion, celery, and a cucumber—the last two ingredients being the only store bought vegetables in the salad. We always enrich our salads with a few spoonfuls of Mom’s homemade vinaigrette. Year’s ago when Mom had a heart attack that messed up her digestion, she concocted a salad dressing that was simple and yummy. It is the only salad dressing that my siblings will eat—it is just that good.
MOM’S SIMPLE VINAIGRETTE
1/3 cup apple cider vinegar
2/3 cup olive oil
1/3 cup honey
Mix all together in a glass jar, shake well and serve. It does separate when it sits—just stir it back up before use.
We had spent our whole afternoon in the kitchen and it was time to sit down and enjoy the fruit of our labors, but we had one last thing to do—set the table. I considered it a very acceptable occasion to pull out the Apple Blossom china that we inherited from my Great Aunt Gladys. Then with the table all set, we sat down to dine.
It was a very enjoyable day, and the meal was well worth all the effort—although nothing was really hard to make, it just took some time to bring it all together. I would love to hear how you spent your Easter. What new tradition did you make? What did you cook? I will give you a little tip: You do not have to wait until Easter to try any of these recipes, so head to the kitchen and enjoy!
