Co-op Easter treats: Review & recipe

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Much as I loved Easter as a child, it’s been a long time since I had an Easter egg of my own. My family don’t buy them, my husband and I don’t buy them for each other and his family just buy one for the children. So when Central England Co-Operative asked me to review a few items from their Easter range, I jumped at the chance. I have literally years of Easters to make up for. I chose two fabulous looking, huge Easter eggs.

The first egg I chose was the Brushed Gold Milk Chocolate Egg with Dark Chocolate Salted Caramel Truffles. What more do I need to say? Yes, it is as good as it sounds! The truffles have a soft centre and both the egg and the truffles as covered in gold dusting.

My only criticism of this one is that the gold really does seem to get everywhere. That said, I suspect this has a lot to do with the fact that I was attempting to take photographs of it. And who wouldn’t? It’s just beautiful!

Our other egg was the fabulous Milk Chocolate Honey Bee Egg and Truffles. The truffles are milk chocolate with a soft centre. They taste strongly of honey, it’s a really distinctive taste that I’ve never experienced in truffles before. We’re really taken with them. The chocolate of the egg is really high quality milk chocolate and the design on them all is really pretty.

Despite being really quite large, fairtrade and very high quality, these eggs are priced at just £7 each. Because they were so reasonably priced, I decided to tackle another Easter dilemma at the same time – visitors. Well, more specifically, something to offer to visitors.

My family live quite nearby and they are prone to calling in this time of year. Much as I’m sure they’d be happy just with a cup of tea, it’s always nice to be able to offer them some home-made biscuits. Both girls love to get involved with making them too, so I’m going to share an incredibly simple recipe that allows them to get really hands-on.

Really simple biscuits – recipe and method

Ingredients

• 200 grams of butter – I use Lurpak because it’s easier to mix with the sugar
• 100 grams of Co-Op Fairtrade Light Brown Soft Sugar
• 1 heaped teaspoonful of Co-op ground cinnamon
• 350 grams of Co-Op plain white flour
• 8 Teaspoons of Co-Op Raspberry Conserve

Method

• Preheat oven to 150 C
• Line a baking tray with baking paper
• Put the butter into a bowl and add the sugar and cinnamon

Next, mix all of these together with a fork. They should become quite soft. I’m sure this could be done with a whisk or blender but the children find it nice and easy with a fork. The mixture will look a bit like this.

• Add the flour and mix everything together with a spoon
• Use your hands to bring the mixture into a dough

• Either roll the mixture out to about 5mm thick and use a cutter to shape, or simply shape into rough rounds with your hands
• If you use your hands, be sure to leave plenty of space between biscuits on the baking tray as they will spread out a lot
• Place your biscuits onto the lined baking tray
• Use a teaspoon to make a small well in the centre of each biscuit
• Fill the well with Co-Op Raspberry Conserve

• Bake in the preheated oven for 25 minutes, they should be golden brown when cooked

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