Brazilian/American Easter

Happy Easter! And as our church in CS would say, "Happy Resurrection Sunday!". Here in Brazil they do things a little differently, so we made our Easter a little bit Brazilian and a little bit American (with some of my family traditions).

In Brazil they don't dye eggs. I know, it's hard to believe. They don't have any PAAS egg dying kits to buy, but I wanted to dye eggs anyway, so we did them with food coloring. And to tell you the truth, I wouldn't go back to the PAAS kits after using the food coloring. The eggs were super bright compared to the kits. I invited over our nephew Gabriel, and Renato's cousin Isabella to help us. I instructed them in the basics and then let the creativity begin. It's always fun to see how everyone decorates their eggs.



Here we are having fun decorating.



Even my mother-in-law joined in the fun!

Instead of chocolate bunnies, they have these hallow chocolate eggs filled with your candy of choice. In the stores they hang them above the isles and you just look around until you find your favorite kind and pull it down. This is what they look like both opened and with the packaging:



A few things that I loved about Easter as a kid, besides dying eggs, was making a bunny cake with my mom, and my grandma's raisin buns. So I decided to incorporate these into our Easter this year. I've made the bunny cake a few times before and always have fun decorating it. I had to get a little creative this year because the candy I'd normally use, they don't have here. I'm talking about JELLY BEANS people! You heard me correctly.......they don't have jelly beans here! I know, very sad. So I had to find new sorts of candy, but it worked well.



Here's another close-up of the bunny cake because I know you're amazed at my mad bunny-cake-makin'-skillz. :)



The new thing I tried this year was trying to make grandma's raisin buns (A.K.A. Hot-Cross Buns). As a kid, my cousins and I would take hand-fulls of these buns and just eat them all day long. I found a recipe on the internet that looked close and gave it a try. They turned out pretty well, but of course they're still not like grandma's. (I even had to use an oven that is gas that has no temp. control that is about 20 yrs old.....YIKES!)

SO, it was a great Easter. I'm reminded again that I'm in Brazil because we're relaxing in front of the TV, watching a soccer game. :) Now that's a Brazilian Easter!