Hopping mad for the Easter Bunny.

Isn’t Easter all about the bunnies? The ones who deliver eggs and the ones who deliver culinary happiness right?

Tender-As-You-Like Rabbit Stew with the Best Dumplings Ever

A Rather Pleasing Carrot Cake with Lime Mascarpone Icing

In the beginning, there were a few mixed feelings amongst the family when I announced that we’d be eating rabbit stew over Easter – who’ll deliver the Easter eggs if we eat the Easter bunny? Ahem. And they’re all over 20 years old…

I started off making the dumplings, rubbing together self-raising flour, butter, finely chopped thyme & a pinch of S&P to make dough crumbs, then added a dash of milk and mixed it all with a fork to create an unsticky dough. With floury hands and a floury bench, I kneaded the dough, then rolled it out into a big sausage. It’s kind of tricky to keep an almost metre long sausage the same thickness the whole way along, when one only has two hands, but I seemed to get there in the end, only to then chop it into inch long pieces and roll them into balls, sprinkle with nutmeg and popped into the fridge to firm up, ready for later.

In a hot oven proof dish, I cooked the lightly floured rabbit pieces until lightly browned, then added sliced bacon, two sprigs of rosemary, a whole lot of button mushrooms and a handful of baby onions, cooking until the meat was nicely coloured and the veg softened. Then I poured in chicken stock and two bottles of beer. Then I totally freaked out when it fizzed up, out of control and nearly bubbled over the top. Jamie might have mentioned that I was supposed to pour the beer in slowly so the bubbles had time to do their thing. Crisis - only just - averted. Covered, it simmered away for half an hour. Then instead of the lid of the pot, I created a lid of dumplings, sitting neatly on top of the stew, the whole thing went into the oven for 45 minutes. The dumplings went brown on top and meshed together, with bubbly stew creeping up in between.

Served up with mashed potato and peas, we each had a piece of rabbit, a couple of dumplings and lots of the incredible sauce. The rabbit was tender, the flavours perfectly complemented each other and the best ever dumplings were just that – the best ever. It was an absolute smash hit and I don’t think for a second that anyone gave a second thought to how their eggs would be delivered on Sunday!

A day of complete over-indulgence on Sunday, I tried to counter the chocolate consumption by baking a healthy carrot cake… I tried something different in the kitchen and actually got all the ingredients ready and measured before I got started. I don’t actually think it saved time and it certainly didn’t save any bench space – I had little bowls of ingredients on every free surface in the kitchen! – but it’s always good to try something new and I kind of felt like I was on a TV show – they love the pre-prepared bowls! So I mixed butter, brown sugar, egg yolks, orange zest and juice, self raising flour, baking soda, almond meal, chopped walnuts and ground cinnamon, cloves, ginger and nutmeg and of course the grated carrot. To this I added whipped-to-stiff-peaks-egg-whites, folding them through then into a greased tin and into the over for 45 minutes.

Does the fact it weighed a tonne mean it’s good for us? Surely…

Once cooled, I smothered it with the icing – mascarpone, cream cheese, lime juice and zest.

Served up for arvo tea with a good cuppa on a cold afternoon, the dense, but crunchy and sweet cake, with the makes-you-squint tangy icing was a hit with crowds. I won’t name names, but there were those who went back for seconds.

This Easter was all about rabbits. We ate carrots to make the rabbits feel better. We ate rabbits to make the chocolate feel better. And we ate chocolate to make the carrots feel better. Or maybe I’m just trying to make all the bunny-lovers out there feel better?

Xx