Baking for Easter - Easter Wreaths

[wiseheart]

As it is Palm Sunday today *points at picture above*, Easter baking has started, too.

Actually, it has started the day before yesterday already, when we baked little wreaths of dough with the kids, putting a coloured Easter egg in the middle, but today I tried out a new recipe for Easter Bunny cookies, and tomorrow we'll make coconut lambs with the kids. So I thought I'd share the recipes again, in case someone would like to give them a try.

I'll put them into individual posts, in the hope that I might add photos later, if the batteries of my camera are willing to recharge. They're several years old, the poor things, so getting new ones probably wouldn't be amiss.

I don't have a photo from the wreaths, so that one recipe will follow right away. BTW, the image above is from last year's Easter decoration. This year, the twigs are much prettier, but the hand-painted eggshells are the same.

EASTER WREATHS

Ingredients for 4-5 wreaths:
500 gr white flour
100 gr margarine, melted and cooled down
100 gr white sugar
1 egg + 1 eggwhite
30 gr yeast (fresh) or 1 package of dried yeast-
good 1/4 l milk,lukewarm
1 pinch of salt
the grated peel of 1/2 lemon
1 eggyolk for painting the wreaths

How to make them:

1. Sieve the flour into a large bowl. Make a small dent in the middle, crubmle the yeast into the dent, add 1 tablespoon of the sugar and some of the lukewarm milk. Stir yeast, sugar and mil, cover it with a little flour and leave it rise in a warm place, until the surface begins to show breach lines.

2. In the meantime, melt the margarine and let it cool. Pre-heat the oven to 190°C. Cover the baking tins with baking paper or fatten them thoroughly.

3. Add the other ingredients to the dough. Knead it thoroughly for about 5 minutes, until smooth and elastic. Cover it and let it rise again, until the volume doubles itself.

4. Knead the dough briefly, then divide it into 4 or 5 parts (depending on how thick you want the wreaths to become. Divide each part in 3 and make 3 rolls, about 20 centimetres long and as thick as your thumb. Braid the rolls and lay them around a paper muffin form for measure. Press the ends together well, or the wreaths will open.

5. Paint the wreaths with eggyolk and let them rise for another 20 minutes. Then bake them in the oven for 15-20 minutes. (It depends on your oven, as every single one bakes differently.)

6. Take the wreaths from the baking tin while still hot and let them cool. Put a coloured egg in the middle. (We make it for the breakfast table on Easter Sunday, as a rule.)