Looking for an activity for yourself or for kids?

Like goat cheese?

You’re in luck. Belle Chevre, award-winning cheesemakers and one of our favorites, has added DIY cheese kits to their line of fresh goat cheeses.

The kits have everything you need to make a log of goat cheese or a bowl of fromage blanc.

While not all cheese is easy to make—you need an aging room, for example—fresh cheeses can be made at home.

There are two kits: Original and Kids, each just $12.00.

It’s so easy (and fun!) to make your own goat cheese at home.

The cheesemaking kit has everything you need to make goat cheese in your own kitchen.

In just a few hours, and with only about ten minutes of active kitchen time, you will be rolling your own chevre logs or mixing a bowl of freshy-fresh fromage blanc.

Once you start making it, you may just want to expand your repertoire to other fresh cheeses. In fact, Here’s a recipe to make fromage blanc at home.
 
 
MORE ABOUT GOAT CHEESE

Belle Chevre Flavored Goat Cream Cheese Review

Decorated Goat Cheese Logs

Goat Cheese For Breakfast

Ways To Use Fresh Goat Cheese

Food & Wine Pairing With Goat Cheese

Why Goat Cheese Is Different
 
 
MORE ABOUT FROMAGE BLANC

Fromage Blanc As A Soup Garnish

Fromage Blanc Vs. Quark

Substituting Fromage Blanc For Fraîche

[1] Belle Chevre’s goat cheese-making kit (all photos © Belle Chevre).

[2] You can make one goat cheese log.

[3] Or, you can make a bowl of fromage blanc.

[1] A close-up on pasta nests. These were made with carbonara ingredients (both photos © DeLallo).

[2] Get out your muffin pan!

[3] Capellini (angel hair) pasta nests. You can get them online from DeLallo.

For Easter—or anytime you’re looking for some food fun—these pasta nests are a festive way to enjoy one of America’s favorite foods.

The nests are simply ribbon pasta like angel hair, rolled into a bird’s nest form while the pasta is still fresh.

The Italian word is sformatini*, but it’s easier to call them nests. Names can vary by region. For example:

 
While this recipe makes mini-nests in muffin cups, you can make plate-size nests as well. You can find pasta nests in larger widths, like fettuccine and spaghetti, etc. If you can’t find the nests, cook regular pasta and use the hack below.

Nests are not a traditional pasta dish. They only appear in recent cookbooks, made with any combination of ingredients.

 
The only limits are your palate and your creativity.
 
 
RECIPE: PASTA CARBONARA NESTS

This recipe, from DeLallo, turns Spaghetti Carbonara into a bird’s nest, with a few substitutions (like angel hair pasta/capellini for the spaghetti).

Ingredients

 
Preparation

1. PREHEAT the oven to 425°. Lightly butter a 12-cup muffin pan.

2. HEAT the oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add the pancetta and cook until golden brown, about 6 minutes. Set aside.

3. BRING a large pot of salted water to a boil. With a slotted spoon, gently lower the pasta nests into the boiling water. They will cook fairly quickly, about three minutes. Gently remove them, tapping off excess water on the rim of the pot, and place them in the muffin cups.

5. SCOOP the pasta from the hot water with a slotted spoon and place it directly into the cream mixture. Stir gently to coat. If the cream begins to clump, add a little of the hot pasta cooking water. Let sit for 5 minutes and place in the muffin cups.

6. CREATE a small indentation in the center of each nest and sprinkle in the remaining cheese among the nests. Sprinkle the remaining sauce over the top, and add the pancetta bits around the rim.

7. BAKE the nests until they become golden and bubbly, about 10 minutes. Remove the muffin pan from the oven. Reduce the oven temperature to 350°F.

8. CRACK a quail egg into each nest and bake for another minute. Once cooked, remove the pan from the oven and allow it to cool for 5 minutes. Remove from the pan and serve garnished with the chopped olives.

If You Don’t Have Nests: A Hack

1. COOK the ribbon pasta—angel hair/capellini, fettuccine, linguine, spaghetti—according to package directions, to al dente.

2. USE tongs to transfer a small amount of the pasta mixture into each muffin cup, forming a spiral as you place it. Arrange to form a nest shape. Do the same if you are cooking regular pasta ribbons, and need to form a nest in a bowl or on a plate.

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*Sformatini also refers to other foods. In Tuscany, for example, it refers to a savory flan.
 
  

[1] The Easter Bunny, fitted with a mask to prevent Covid (photo © Lillie Belle Farms).

Even the Easter Bunny is taking precautions in these risky times.

The chocolatiers at Lillie Belle Farms have been turning out a colony* of chocolate bunnies wearing protective masks.

Dark chocolate, milk chocolate and white chocolate bunnies are waiting for you, while supplies last.

Head to Lillie Belle Farms

All of the other chocolates are terrific, too. Our favorites:

We can always rely on DiBruno Bros. in Philadelphia for the best specialty foods—and creative ways to use them.

For Easter, they’ve used Easter egg cookie cutters (photo #2) to create an Easter cheese plate (photo #1).

The semi-hard cheese group includes young Asiago, Cheddar, Colby, Edam, Fontinella, Gouda, Manchego, Provolone (photo #1) and Queso Blanco, among others.

Semi-hard cheese is a classification of cheese based upon body. The terms semi-hard and hard refer mainly to moisture content, not to texture.

Because these cheeses contain less moisture than the soft and soft-ripened types, they hold their shape much better—good to cut with cookie cutters.

A cheese can start as semi-soft, then move to semi-hard via aging, which evaporates the moisture.
 
 
HOW TO MAKE CHEESE EASTER EGGS

1. PICK your cheeses. While DiBruno Bros. used only provolone, try at least two different colors: provolone and cheddar, for example.

2. PICK your toppings. You can use anything you have around, but here are some ideas. Use as much color as you can; e.g., green pimento olives instead of black olives, and sultanas (golden raisins) instead of dark purple raisins.

 
Plus:

 
You can also add colorful fruit to the plate: berries, dried apricots, orange/mandarin segments, red grapes, etc.

3. CUT and decorate the cheese shapes.

4. SERVE as a first course, with a salad course, or after the main course, before dessert.

[1] Easter egg cheese plate, created by DiBruno Bros from provolone (photo © DiBruno Bros).

[2] Easter egg cookie cutter set on Amazon (photo © Ann Clark Cookie Cutters).

[3] The easy cheese platter: Surround rounds and wedges of cheese with Easter candy (photo © Murray’s Cheese).

Put your favorite cheeses on a board and surround them with Easter candy (photo #3). This works best when cheese is served after the main course.

Bite-size, foil-wrapped Easter eggs are best because chocolate is a good pairing with cheese.
 
 
> CHECK OUT THE DIFFERENT TYPES OF CHEESE IN OUR CHEESE GLOSSARY <

[1] Blueberries and lemon curd are a delicious combination Here’s the recipe from Baking A Moment. Substitute ice cream, pudding or mousse for the yogurt (photo © Baking A Moment).

[2] It looks like the Easter Bunny made this parfait. Here’s the recipe from Sugar Spice And Family Life. Substitute ice cream, pudding or mousse for the yogurt (photo © Sugar Spice And Family Life).

[3] Use any glass vessel you have. We use our champagne flutes (photo © Davio’s | Boston).

[4] These Cookies & Cream Parfaits With Chocolate Cream And Bailey’s Irish, for any occasion, are irresistable. Here’s the recipe (photo © Homemade Hooplah).

If you’re sheltering in place for Easter—and most of us certainly are—here’s a dessert that is both festive and easy: a no-bake parfait.

Originally (and still) made with ice cream, yogurt* parfaits were adapted as yogurt† became a popular food in 1977†.

For dessert, there are chocolate parfaits, butterscotch and caramel parfaits, parfaits with most kinds of fruit and fruit sauces. But for Easter, bright colors complement the season.

June 25th is National Strawberry Parfait Day.

The History Of The Parfait.
 
 
HOW TO CONSTRUCT YOUR DESSERT PARFAIT

WANT A LAYER OF CAKE?

The yogurt parfaits don’t use crumbled cookies or cake as a bottom layer, but it’s a good addition to a dessert parfait. If you want to add a cake or cookie layer(s) but don’t have any cake or brownies at home, substitute:

 
DESSERT PARFAIT LAYERS & GARNISHES

Start with ice cream and/or sorbet layers of choice. You can also use mousse or pudding.

For the other layers, see what you have on hand—especially in bright Easter colors:

 
Some non-colorful options for another occasion:

 
Any combination is delicious.
 
FOR ADULTS: LIQUEUR

Add a hint of liqueur to:

 
BREAKFAST & BRUNCH GARNISHES

Any combination of fresh fruit, sliced or diced, works. Use two different flavors of yogurt for added flavors and colors.

For additional layers and garnishes, try:

 
Bon appetit!
 
 
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*Yogurt, a staple in Greek, Turkish and other Mediterranean cuisines, was made in those local communities and had low awareness among the general population.

†While yogurt is an ancient food and had been available in the U.S. since the early 1900s, it was seen as a health food, available in health food stores, a century before healthy eating was adapted by consumers nationwide.

Yogurt became a popular food as a result of Dannon’s famous “Georgians Over 100” advertising campaign (source).