Easter came and went in our house with anything but the typical fanfare. Instead of running down the stairs to discover the Easter Bunny's generous bounty, my twin tweens slept until the crack of noon, slowly descended the stairs, and took a few handfuls of candy from their sparsely filled baskets before grabbing their phones. The loot was not the usual pile of pastel candies, swimsuits, goggles, beach activities and pool toys that the Bunny annually delivers in advance of our Easter Week beach vacation. Not this year. Seeing as he was scrambling to fill all the baskets (being quarantined himself, he relied on the good folks at Amazon and Target Drive Up to assist) and that he must have known we were not going anywhere soon, he instead supplied a little gummy candy, jelly beans and some chocolate bunnies to my grateful, if slightly disappointed, kids.
Instead of getting dressed up in our spring finest and heading off to Mass before joining friends for brunch and an egg hunt, we watched Cardinal Dolan and his fellow priests at America's Parish St. Patrick's Cathedral say the Paschal Mass in our pajamas. As lovely as it looked, and as poignant as his homily was, it was no substitute for the joy of the congregation signing "Jesus Christ is Risen Today" in a packed church filled with white flowers and little children in Easter hats and bowties.
But there was one tradition I wasn't going to give up. Our Easter dinner. We would have one, even if it meant I had to scour the internet to find what we needed, and it would be a time-honored, classic feast of glazed spiral ham, macaroni and cheese, green beans and dessert. The only ham I could get was a 10 pounder, so needless to say you will be seeing a lot of ham recipes here in the coming days. The macaroni and cheese was the recipe I posted here a few weeks ago. I casseroled the green beans with the old school recipe from Campbell's soup. For dessert: mini carrot bundt cakes with cream cheese glaze. And they were divine.
Tiny bundt cakes decked out in their Easter best
This is a no nonsense carrot cake recipe. There are no nuts, raisins, pineapple or coconut added. The flavor is sweet carrot and spice. The glaze is rich, thick and tangy but not thick enough to be piped through a piping bag (it will run out of the tip - trust me, I tried). They refrigerate well and are sublime with a glass of milk. I made them in a mini bundt pan that looks like a muffin pan but with fancy bundt wells instead of the traditional round ones. If you don't have a mini bundt pan, you can make this in a muffin pan.
Mini Carrot Bundt Cakes (makes 12 cakes)
Ingredients:
Cakes
1 1/2 c ups all purpose flour
1/2 tsp. kosher salt
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/8 tsp ground allspice
1/8 tsp ground ginger
1 cup granulated sugar
3/4 cups vegetable oil
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 cups finely grated carrots
Cream Cheese Glaze
1/2 stick unsalted butter (4 tbsp or 1/4 cup), softened
1/2 bar cream cheese (4 0z), softened
1 1/2 cups powdered sugar
1-2 tbsp heavy cream (can sub half and half if that's all you have)
1 tsp vanilla extract
Method:
Prepare pan with non stick spray or baking spray. Heat oven to 350 degrees. Whisk dry ingredients together (flour through ginger and set aside). In the bowl of an electric mixer, combine oil, eggs and sugar, and mix until thoroughly combined. Add vanilla and mix to combine. Add in flour mixture and mx to combine. Add carrots and mix gently to combine.
Fill each well of the bundt pan with enough batter to go 3/4 of the way full. Bake for 18-22 minutes until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool completely in the pan (30 minutes), then turn out and decorate.
While they cool, make glaze Add butter and cream cheese to the bowl of an electric mixer and mix to combine until completely smooth (about 3 minutes). Add in powdered sugar and mix again (slowly at first as not to make a sugar explosion), then add in cream and vanilla and turn speed to high. Mix for a couple minutes until light and smooth. Drizzle glaze over cooled cakes with a spoon and decorate with sprinkles, if you like. Let the glaze dry before serving.
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