Wow, this episode from 1995 is loaded with ideas for fun Easter treats to make and share with friends! As a shortcut, all the bread recipes use store-bought dough, which is much faster and easier than making it fromg scratch. Arlene is making “Almond Joyful” eggs, paska bread with eggs, hot cross buns, orange pecan danish rolls, peanut butter eggs, bunny breads and more… Which one looks best to you?
Note: we were unable to find the original recipe for diabetic-friendly eggs.
A “Joyful” Coconut Egg
This rich coconut-filled treat is just like a certain famous candy bar!
Ingredients
- 1 1/2 cups butter
- 1 can Eagle Brand Milk (14 oz)
- 1 tsp vanilla
- 5 2/3 cups powdered sugar
- 1 lb very fine flaked coconut
- 2 cups chopped pecans
- 2 large Hershey Milk chocolate bars
Instructions
- In a saucepan over medium heat, melt butter. Add Eagle Brand milk and whisk to incorporate. Add vanilla and mix well.
- Add sugar, coconut and pecans and, using an electric mixer, mix very thoroughly for 6 minutes. Pat very firmly, into a greased 9 x 13-inch pan. Cover and refrigerate overnight.
- Cut into squares or roll into small eggs. Place chocolate bars in microwave and melt carefully. Dip eggs into melted chocolate and place on waxed paper lined sheet and refrigerate until hardened. When set, wrap individually in waxed paper. These taste like an Almond Joy candy bar. Makes lots, depending on the size eggs you make. Enjoy!
Braided Easter Breads
Starting with store-bought bread dough makes this recipe so easy!
Ingredients
- 2 loaves frozen white or wheat bread dough
- 3 fresh eggs, dyed
- 1 whole egg, beaten
- Nonstick cooking spray
Instructions
- Thaw frozen bread dough for about 2 hours. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Spray a baking sheet with nonstick spray.
- Roll each thawed loaf of bread dough into a 36 inch rope, by rolling between your hands. Loosely braid both ropes together by twisting one "rope" around the other. Form a circle and pinch ends together to form circle. Place dyed eggs at 3 points on dough, nesting egg into place so it is not disturbed during baking.
- Brush entire surface with brushed egg. Spray a piece of plastic wrap with nonstick spray and cover bread. Let rise about 15 to 30 minutes. Remove cover and place in preheated oven for 35 minutes. Place on wire rack to cool. May be frozen and reheated at time of serving. To reheat, place in 350 degree oven for 15 minutes. Makes 1 loaf. Enjoy!
- NOTE: You may use white and wheat dough together for a combination bread flavors. Also the dough may be made into any form and eggs placed at random.
Hot Cross Buns
A delicious and easy classic that will look beautiful on your Easter table.
Ingredients
- 1 loaf Rhoades Raisin bread dough, slightly thawed
- Powdered sugar icing
- 12 in muffin tin
Instructions
- Thaw raisin bread for about two hours. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease muffin tins. Prepare your favorite powdered sugar frosting. Cover and set aside.
- Using a sharp knife.cut into eight equal portions. To divide evenly, lightly mark loaf into two sections.
- Divide each section into four pieces and cut. Place in prepared muffin pan. Cover with plastic wrap that has been sprayed with non-stick cooking spray and let rise until double in size. Remove wrap and bake at 350 degrees for 20 minutes. Cool and frost with a cross. Makes 9 rolls. Enjoy!
Peanut Butter Eggs
An Easter favorite!
Ingredients
- 2 cups peanut butter, creamy or chunky
- 2 cups Confectioner's sugar
- 3 cups Rice Krispies cereal
- 4 Tbsp butter, melted
- 2 pkg milk chocolate morsels, melted
Instructions
- In a large bowl, mix all ingredients together. Shape into eggs.
- Dip in melted chocolate, coating thoroughly. Wrap in waxed paper to store. Makes about 3 dozen eggs. Enjoy!
Large Bunny Bread
These are so cute! They make great gifts.
Ingredients
- 2 loaves wheat or honey wheat bread dough
- 2 sliced almonds
- 2 large raisins
- 1 egg, beaten
Instructions
- Cut one loaf dough into 1/4 and 3/4 portions. Shape 3/4 portion into egg shape for body and place on greased cookie sheet. Shape 1/4 portion into pear shape and place above body for head.
- Clip side whiskers with scissors. Cut other loaf in half. Cut one half in half again for ears and roll into two 16 inch ropes. Fold together and place folded edge near top of head and pinch top of ends together. With remaining half of loaf, divide dough in half. Take one half and cut into two pieces and shape into large thumper feet and place under bunny. Clip toes. Divide last piece of dough into 1/3 and 2/3 portions. Divide 2/3 into two hands and place on side of body and clip fingers.
- Divide remaining 1/3 dough into two large balls and one small ball. Place two large balls on face for cheeks and one small ball for nose. Place two raisins for eyes and almonds for teeth. Brush everything with whole beaten egg, even teeth. Cover with plastic wrap that has been sprayed with cooking spray and let rise for 15 to 30 minutes.
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Remove plastic wrap and bake for 25 to 30 minutes or until browned. Makes 1 large bunny. Enjoy!
Baby Bunny Bread
These are so cute! They make great gifts.
Ingredients
- 5 Rhoades whole wheat Texas rolls
- 2 sliced almonds
- 2 raisins
- 1 egg, beaten
Instructions
- Shape one roll into teardrop for head and place on greased cookie sheet: Combine two rolls to form a oval shape for the body. Place below head.
- For paws and cheeks, cut one roll as shown. Form feet out of two large pieces and paws out of two small pieces. Clip toes and fingers with scissors. Place adjoining boy.
- With remaining dough form two balls for cheeks and pinch off tiny ball for nose, and place on face. Place raisins above cheeks for eyes. Insert almonds for teeth. Cut one roll in half and roll into 5-inch ropes for ears. Bend ropes in half, pinch bend to form tip of ear. Place above head as shown.
- Brush everything with beaten egg. Cover with plastic wrap that has been sprayed with cooking spray and let rise for 15 to 30 minutes. Remove plastic wrap and bake in preheated 350 degree oven for 15 to 20 minutes. Makes 1 small bunny. Enjoy!
Transcript
- Well Happy Easter, we’re so glad you could be with us today. I hope that you’re taking out just a little bit of time from the preparation for this most blessed holiday that we celebrate throughout the year, the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. Up from the grave he arose triumphant over death. No other God anywhere in the world can make that statement, that he was dead and now he’s alive. Only the Lord Jesus Christ whom we serve. This is the bold statement that Jesus makes in John Chapter 11 where he says, “I am the Resurrection and the Life. “He who believes in me will live, “even though he dies. “And whoever lives and believes in me “will never, ever die.” Then it says, “Do you believe this?” Well, I believe it because I have tasted of the life that only the Lord Jesus can bring. And if you haven’t, I would invite you at this time of the year, just taste and see how good the Lord really is. Today, we’re gonna do some goodies that we always connect with Easter, and that is the Easter paska or the Easter bread, and then of course some Easter eggs, some candies. And we’re gonna show you some things. And we’re gonna give you lots of recipes. Please, take the phone off the hook if it interrupts you normally, ’cause you tell me that in the letters sometime. Take the phone off the hook. This half hour you’re gonna be glued to the set because we’re gonna move through these recipes very quickly. And of course at the end of the program, we’ll tell you how you can get all of today’s recipes for everything that you see. Stick with us now, we’ll be right back to start our special Easter tribute. We’ll be right back.
- Here’s today’s AT HOME HINT. If you cover chocolate as it melts, condensation underneath the cover will drop back into the chocolate and make it grainy. Work with less and leave the cover off. If you’ve got a helpful hint that you’d like to share with us, we want to hear from you. Send your hint to AT HOME HINTS, CTV, Wall, PA 15148-1499. Well the first thing we’re gonna get started with today is our Easter paska. Now you can go ahead and make your regular bread dough, and egg bread dough if you want to. I personally think using these frozen bread doughs is the easiest way out and the nicest way to make any kind of a bread, hot cross buns, bread dough, whatever. And you just let them sit out for about two hours. Now to make the paska, you have it totally thawed. You can use wheat bread, white bread, whatever. And what you do, you have to start to shape it into a rope. You’re gonna squeeze this out, ’cause it’s been thawing for awhile and it does have some… The yeast in it makes it rise, so you’re gonna have to squeeze it to try to make it into a rope. And the way you do that… Maybe the kids could help you with this a little bit. Wash those hands real good. But anyway you make it into a rope. If you wanna a nice big round paska, you make it about 36 inches long. And not only one but you can make two. And at the end of the program I’m gonna show you that we even used a wheat bread and white bread, twined them or braided them together and it makes a real good, real nice bread. Okay again, we’re taking our bread, and we’re just kinda pulling it into shape before we start rolling it because we need these to be about the same length because we’re gonna braid them. Now when you think of braiding you think of three-strand. Well this really isn’t three-strand what I’m doing. This is only a two-strand. And of course like I told you, this is two loaves of bread. So this makes a nice big round paska. You also have some eggs. Now you don’t have to hard boil them. These are just raw eggs that we’ve colored. Because when you bake this in the oven it will cook the egg so you don’t have to boil it first. But make sure that you mark those if you’re doin’ that so that the kids don’t pick up a raw egg or you could have a major mess on your hands. I like to bake these ahead of time because they freeze well, very, very well. And we have a lot to show you at the end of the program. All right, let’s imagine that this is… I’d probably work this a little longer if I had the time, the luxury of the time. But then you take your two strands of bread dough, and you connect them together, okay. Connect them together, and I just wrap them, one over the other, because that’s what makes it look like a braid. Just one over the other, one over the other. And you’re gonna take more time to do this. You’ll take more time to do this at home than I’m taking today. Then you make them into a circle and you tuck the ends under keeping the braid look. Take your pan like this, and you’re gonna spray it with Pam, or you’re gonna butter it, whichever you want to do. Put your bread dough on there, again making sure that you tuck it under so that the braid, or the twist part shows. Then you’re going to nest your eggs right in the center of the dough. And try to do it so that when it cooks… ‘Cause this is gonna puff way up when it hits the oven. You’re gonna not want this to roll off so you have to nest it down in there, all right? And make them the colors of Easter, you know the pretty pastels. Then you’re gonna take one egg, a whole egg, a beaten egg, you’ll do the egg wash right now, and you do that all over this bread. Don’t miss a spot because where you miss a spot it would be nicely brown and it won’t be shiny. It will be dull, and you’ll say, “Why didn’t take more time to do that?” that’s a lesson we all learned, if you just remember to not do that too hastily ’cause you want to be sure that you have covered it all. Now you’re gonna let this rise for about 30 minutes. You take a piece of plastic wrap that you have sprayed Pam on. We’ve already done that because the loaves were sitting on it, and all you do is cover this and let it sit for 30 minutes. You’ll bake that for about 30 minutes in a 350-degree preheated oven, and there’s your paska, okay? Easy, right? I told you it was gonna be simple today. Then next what we’re gonna do is hot cross buns. Now hot cross buns are a tradition particularly at this time of the year. And again, we’re using… You can use the raisin bread dough, the frozen bread dough, it’s raisin. Or you can use white or wheat, whatever you like, whatever you particularly like, you or your family. And I take one loaf of it and I cut it in half. And then I cut it in half again. And then I cut each of those halves in half again. So you’ll have eight pieces altogether. One loaf of bread will make you eight hot cross buns. Now you can use a sweet dough. I’ve made them with sweet dough, and I’ve make them with just the plain dough. What you need in hot cross buns, first of all you need to spray the pans. And I like to take raisins and a little bit of cinnamon, just add that to the raisins. Mix them around a bit just like this. And then I lay these raisins out on my counter. And I take a piece of the dough just like this. And I just go like that, put some raisins in there, and then I shape it. And you wanna shape it because those raisins will be inside and that cinnamon will flavor your dough. That’s how big you want it. Pop it right in there. That’s as simple as it can be. I mean, how much easier can it be, right? You got it. This is so simple. And when you have them all formed and you put them in your pan they will… They bake in an oven. They don’t get an egg wash because what you’re gonna do is put on icing. These have to bake… I believe these bake for 20 minutes, okay? And again, this is something you get the kids involved with. This is a nice breakfast on Easter morning. This would be nice for breakfast. Nice addition for your dinner in the afternoon. This is a nice addition anytime ’cause these buns, they’re very light. They don’t taste real, “Oh, I couldn’t eat them. “They’re so heavy.” Some nice jam or jellies beside this or that little touch of icing on top. Our friend Rose, her picture is with Linda’s and Roger’s and Paul’s and my on our second cookbook. My friend Rose, she loves hot cross buns . Now this woman tells me, “Oh Arlene, “the buns at such and such a place “are just so good. “You have to go there. “You have to try ’em.” She knows her hot cross buns. I would let these rise just awhile. After I had them like this, I would let them rise. Then I would put them in the oven. Remember, no egg wash on these. When they come out, this is nice and light. They freeze well. If I were going to freeze ’em, bake ’em a couple of days ahead, don’t put the icing on them. Do that fresh because the icing never holds up, if you know what I mean. So, I have some icing here. You can do this with just… This is just plain old confectionery sugar icing. Just a little bit of water in with the powdered sugar. And all you do is take and go across. That’s why they call them hot cross buns. And you go the other way. Now what I like to do after I get this off my fingers here, is just put a couple of raisins on the top of them because that kind of tells you what’s going on on the inside here. Let me do that one more time for you. Hot cross buns. These aren’t hot now but they were when they come out of the oven, and sometimes if you put the icing on them then, the icing runs off. So I’d like to wait till they cool down a bit, and then I do my raisins on top, and I do my icing. There you have it, hot cross buns. And when we come right back, we’re gonna do our Easter candies. So stay with us, we’ll be right back. Well, we’re back, let me show you this before we do our candies. I hope that you can appreciate, this is my bunny family. I think these are so cute. These are made out of the frozen bread dough. This is a wheat dough that I used here. I used the plain white breads with these. This is so easy to make. I’ll include the recipes. I can’t show you today ’cause a little bit of time. But I will include the directions on how to make these. But isn’t this impressive to put on your family’s table for Easter dinner? I think these are great. This is our bunny family, the At Home bunny family. All right, come with me now. I’m gonna show you how to make… This is called a joyful coconut egg. And the reason why we call it joyful is because it tastes similar to Almond Joy but it’s a pecan, instead of almond, but it’s that heavy coconut. And what we’ve done is taken one can of Eagle brand milk, put it in our mixer, and we’re going to add a teaspoon of vanilla, and this is a cup and a half. This makes a lot. This is a cup and a half of soft butter. Go ahead put that in. And next to that then will be one-pound bag… They’re putting only 14 ounces in it and it still makes it okay. But it calls for a one-pound bag of the flaked coconut. So just drop that in there. All right, and, let’s see. The pecans, we have about two cups of finely chopped pecans. This recipe is great because if you have people that you wanna make a gift of an egg for, this is what you’d wanna do. This makes some of the nicest, like half-pound eggs. You can even make them quarter-pound eggs. But it’s wonderful because once you make this, you don’t use it right away. By that I mean you have to let it firm up in the refrigerator for overnight, and then the next day you melt your chocolate and you make them into any size eggs that you want. This is about 5 2/3 cups of powdered sugar. I told you this makes a lot. If you have the energy and the, whatever it takes to sit and roll small eggs out of all that you’re going to be preparing here, this is great to put in your Easter baskets or whatever. But if you feel like, “Oh, I’m gonna make a couple “of one-pound eggs just for my family members,” if that’s one of the things that you like to do, then by all means do that. It will go into a buttered 13 by nine pan. I need to mix this around a bit. You know when you have powdered sugar in the kitchen? I’m gonna probably end up looking like the abominable snowman here because like I said, it’s coming back out. Yes, it is! You know every time we do Easter eggs with powdered sugar I end up looking like something that just came out of Nanook of the North. Okay, here we go. Here we go. Now it’s gonna do it. I know you think this is too much in here but trust me, I made this before and it’ll work. But this has to beat for six minutes with a mixer. So when you make this at home, remember that. Just remember you have to beat this for six minutes with the mixer. I know it’s going everywhere. Why is it every time I do an Easter program we end up with powdered sugar everywhere? Oh well, it’s gonna be all right. This is stuff that happens at home, right? Doesn’t this happen to your family? You better believe it. All right, let’s see here now. We’re gonna turn it up a bit. There we go. And like I said, six minutes, put it in there, cover it and put it in the refrigerator. When you bring it out in the morning you’ll have to cut it. It’ll be very stiff and you cut pieces of it. But as you take it in your hand and you form it either into eggs, big eggs or small eggs, it works very, very well. The warmth of your hand will mold it into that particular shape you want. Make a large egg, some small eggs. We have some large eggs we’re gonna show you at the end of the program in just a minute. So we’re gonna let that go. Wow, I’m ashamed how bad that looks. Sorry folks, but you understand what it’s like when you’re using powdered sugar. One year we had a cloud in here. It looked like the place was going up in smoke we had so much powdered sugar. But that’s the fun part of this, right? Okay, next we wanna do peanut butter eggs because these are very easy. This recipe was sent to me by Beth Raybuck, and I wanna thank Beth for this because I’ve made these. These are very, very good and very easy. You wanna take a bowl, and you’re gonna put two cups of peanut butter in the bowl. This one you’ll do by hand. If the kids wanna get involved in making some of this to give as gifts to their friends or to their grandparents or whatever, let them get involved. It’s great. You’re gonna mix this up with some more powdered sugar and let me put the four tablespoons of melted butter in here first. Now these aren’t low-fat, I know. We’re all working on that. We’ve all been bad for awhile and we’re all getting back to it now, right? Let’s encourage each other with these things because it makes you feel bad when you get away from it. It’s hard to get back, isn’t it? I know. This is three cups of Rice Krispies cereal, just the plain Rice Krispies that you eat in the morning with milk and sugar. Now we’re just gonna put them in here. Now, this makes a crunchy type of an Easter egg in that it tastes, kinda like a Crunch Bar. You know that Nestle Crunch Bar? But then it has the peanut butter flavor which the Crunch Bar doesn’t have. That’s the flavor that you get. And you’re gonna have to work this with your hands. I’m not gonna do that because I want you to… I don’t wanna get this all over my hands right now. I’ve got other things I wanna show you. But you’re gonna work this and work this, and you think it’s not gonna come together. But honest, all of a sudden, it will come together. And what you’ll end up with is something that looks like this. And what you do, you have shaped these into egg shapes. I like to keep these in the refrigerator. Make all your egg shapes. Put them in a pan. And then you’ll have them so that when you dip them in the chocolate, and all we’re using here is milk chocolate chips or the milk chocolate big bars, the milk chocolate bars. And you melt that down, and you dip them in individually. Scrape off the bottom. Put them on wax paper. Put them back in the refrigerator. I like to wrap them individually, ’cause I don’t like to just put them all in a big box or something. I like to wrap things like this individually. And if you like to double-dip them to add more chocolate, that’s fine, no problem. But believe me, all of this will end up looking like this. You dip them in chocolate. This makes a lot, surprising. That recipe makes a lot, but so does this recipe. This is stuff you can do ahead of time, which is something that I like. Okay, we have one more recipe. And there are people who are on sugar-restricted diets who have a very difficult time at this time of the year when there’s so many goodies that I call them floating around, and people are, “Have a piece of this,” and, “Have some of that,” and, “Have some of this,” and here you are because of health reasons, you cannot partake of the chocolate or the real sweet confections that everybody’s trying to have you taste. This is a diabetic Easter egg recipe. There’s no chocolate in it. But it starts out with cream cheese that is at room temperature. And what they want you to do is to blend this to kinda make it creamy. And at home when you’re doing this, you’re gonna blend this for about four to five minutes, just with a spoon, don’t use the mixer, just until it becomes really, really, really creamy, all right. Then, you’re gonna add ten packets, this is an eight-ounce cream cheese, ten packets of Sweet’N Low, these little pink envelopes just like that. I’m sure you could use Equal. I don’t know what the ratio is for sweetness. You’d have to try it yourself and figure it out, whatever that was. And you’re gonna mix it around. This is really very, very, very easy. Next we’re gonna put… This is about 3/4 of a teaspoon of grated orange rind. Just take a fresh orange and grate it. This is grated orange rind, 3/4 of a teaspoon. The same with the lemon rind. And then about three tablespoons of chopped walnuts, chopped pecans, whichever one you’d like. We’re just gonna put that in there. Now what I have done ahead of time is I have tinted some coconut. If you’re gonna make these one day, I would suggest you tint your coconut the day before if you have the luxury of the time. And all I did was take my regular old food colorings, and I put so much coconut into a container in a jar, took the food coloring on a measuring spoon. Put about a half a teaspoon of water, and just put about 15 to 20 drops of the particular color that I wanted in the water, put the water in the jar and then shook the jar around. And it’s amazing how evenly that that will color that coconut. Then I put it out on a plate and let it air dry a little bit, because if it’s too moist, it will not adhere to your egg. Okay as you can see, this is just cream cheese, the orange flavor, the walnuts, and now what you do with this, you take a little amount and you work it into an egg shape, kinda like that, and you roll it in the coconut. Now these you have to keep refrigerated. Remember, these have to stay refrigerated because of the cream cheese. And cover them all over completely. And there you have, nice little egg. This makes about 15 to 20 eggs depending on the size. It’s hard to say how many you’re gonna get or what the quantity will be because some people make them bigger, some people make them smaller. But really, about this size, this will make about 15 to 20. That’s all there is to it. Put them on wax paper and put them in the refrigerator. And when we come back, we’re gonna show you the complete Easter table. We hope you’ve enjoyed the program. Stay with us now, we’ll be right back.
- [Announcer] To receive the recipes presented on today’s program, plus many more great recipe ideas, send your best donation in a stamped, self-addressed, business-sized envelope to At Home, CTV, Wall, PA 15148-1499. You’ll receive Arlene’s heartwarming newsletter, Enjoy! featuring an entire month of At Home recipes including today’s mouth-watering dishes. Be sure to include the Enjoy! Issue number with your request.
- Well, as you can see, our table is totally full of all kind of the goodies that we’ve made for you today. Let’s start here. These are the large, the Almond Joy, the joyful eggs. I’ve made them into gift eggs. And then next to them is our paska bread. This is a regular loaf of just some wheat bread but look, here’s the bread that has baked with the egg in it. Next to them are the hot cross buns that we told you about. Don’t they look good and inviting? Mm, with a little bit of marmalade. This is something that I’m going to include the recipe for that I did not get to present. This is an orange pecan Danish roll. Unbelievable! And back here is another gift egg with our smaller peanut butter eggs around it. Wouldn’t you like to have one of these eggs for Easter? I think so too. And these are the diabetic eggs back here. In the corner we’ve just some beautifully colored Easter eggs. And here’s our bunny. This is the bunny family. You can see here’s the big ones and the babies here. I think these are a great addition to anybody’s Easter table. Remember, that Jesus said, “I am the Resurrection and the Life.” Those are powerful words. I hope that you have taken them into your heart. I hope that they mean something to you. And I hope that this Easter, you’ll find yourself in church worshiping the Lord Jesus Christ. When he came out of that grave, he brought hope to humanity. He gave a generation that was without hope, he gave the world that was black in sin, black with sin, he gave us life and he gave us hope. I thank God every day for Jesus and what he did at Calvary. If you don’t understand what I’m talking about, will you write to me? I’d really like to share even more in detail about the relationship that you can have with this risen savior. His name is Jesus. I hope I’ve introduced him to you today. If you’ve known him for a long time, then rejoice with us and celebrate this wonderful day, the day that we celebrate the Resurrection. Happy Easter to you, and be sure to join us the next time because it just wouldn’t be the same without you here At Home. We’ll see you then, and Happy Easter.
- [Announcer] Fresh produce provided by Jordan Banana, wholesalers of fresh fruit and vegetables in Dravosburg, PA. Appliances provided by Dacor Distinctive Appliances, a reflection of your good taste. Groceries provided by Foodland, where the answer is always, Yes! Cornerstone Television wishes to thank all our faithful viewers whose consistent prayers and financial support have made this program possible.
I’m loving the At Home shows and recipes. Do you have the recipe for the Orange Pecan Danish Rolls Arlene showed at the end on the program? Thanks for your hard work to preserve Arlene’s legacy of love and cooking.
Unable to find the fat free icing you made today
Hi Joan, sorry about that! We were unable to find the original frosting and cake recipes, so we substituted a recipe from another show. Sorry it’s not the exact right one. We’ll keep looking!