Last year we made this Speckled Egg Malted Milk Egg Cake.

This year, McCormick sent us a speckled cheesecake recipe, developed by Amanda Rettke of I Am Baker.

For step-by-step photos and a video, visit Amanda’s recipe page.

Two white cake layers sandwich a bright yellow lemon cheesecake layer.

For even more springtime color splash, tint one of the white layers pink. Just add 3-5 drops of red food color to the white batter until you reach the desired shade.

RECIPE: SPECKLED ROBIN’S EGG CHEESECAKE

Ingredients

 
For The Lemon Cheesecake

 
For The Buttercream

 
Cocoa Water For The Speckles

 
Plus

 
Preparation

1. BAKE the white cake layers per box instructions. Set aside. (We baked the cake layers the day before and wrapped them in plastic after cooling.) When they are cool, level the tops if necessary.

2. PREPARE the cheesecake: Heat the oven to 350°F. Prepare a springform pan: Line with parchment and spray with non-stick spray.

Allow it to cool for at least 3 hours before assembling the cake.

[1] and [2] A cake for Easter or other spring celebration (photos courtesy I Am Baker). [3] The blue color is created with McCormick Colors From Nature. [4] The real deal, robin’s eggs in their nest (photo courtesy Erica Lea | Flickr).

4. BAKE for 40 minutes or the until center is almost set. Cool. Refrigerate 3 hours or until firm.

5. PREPARE the buttercream. In medium bowl, mix the sugar and butter with a spoon or an electric mixer on low speed. Stir in the vanilla and 1 tablespoon of the milk. Gradually beat in just enough remaining milk to make the frosting smooth and spreadable. If too thick, beat in more milk, a few drops at a time. Add 1 teaspoon of the sky blue food coloring. You can add more or less to reach your desired color. Set aside.

6. ASSEMBLE the cake. Place the first layer of white cake on a cake stand. Carefully place the lemon cheesecake directly on top. Set the final layer of white cake on top of cheesecake. You may need to trim and level the cheesecake before putting the cake together. (No frosting between layers is necessary.)

7. COVER the cake in buttercream and smooth with a small offset spatula. Go back with a bench scraper to get extra-smooth sides and top.

8. WHISK together the speckling liquid ingredients. Place the cake on a table lined with newspaper and wear a protective apron. Dip the brush into the cocoa water and then hold it in your left hand near the cake. With your pointer finger of your right hand, run your finger along the bristles of the paint brush. The first time you do this, try to be a little farther away from the cake, just so you are able to gauge how much pressure you can use, how much liquid you need on your brush, and how close you need to be.

Spatter the speckles all over the top and sides of the cake. If you get a big spot or an area you don’t like, you can carefully dab a paper towel onto the area and remove most of the brown, while still blending in with the cake. When done, clean off the edge of the cake stand.

9. GARNISH the top with candy grass to center and add small chocolate eggs. Chill until ready to serve.

Our pots and pans don’t go into the dishwasher: They need to be hand-washed.

While hot sudsy water and a Scrub Daddy do the job, we wouldn’t overlook the opportunity to save our manicure.

So we were all ears when Good Eggs sent us this recipe to cook the main and the side in one dish. Home cooks have been doing this for years—but not the cooks in our family.

With great enthusiasm we made this recipe, and then ordered a couple of books on one-pan cooking to see how we could make kitchen life easier (recommendations below).
 
 
RECIPE: LAMB & ZUCCHINI WITH GREEK ACCENTS

We love lamb and Greek cuisine with its accents of lemon and mint, so we didn’t wait to try it. In 30 minutes, we were ready to dig in.

Note that this is a skillet recipe for the stove top, not a sheet pan recipe for the oven.

Ingredients For 2 Servings

 
Preparation

1. SALT and pepper both sides of each lamb chop and set aside. Add about ½ cup olive oil to a cast iron pan and heat over high. When the oil is hot (almost to the point of smoking), carefully add the zucchini in one layer and cook on high heat until browned, flipping so both sides are crispy and deeply golden-brown.

2. USE a slotted spoon to remove the zucchini from the pan; place on a plate and set aside.

3. COMBINE the yogurt, garlic, lemon and a tablespoon of the mint in a clean bowl. Add salt and pepper to taste. Set aside.

4. POUR off some of the oil from the zucchini pan, leaving a thin layer on the bottom. Turn the burner to high. When the oil is hot, add the chops and cook for about 4 to 5 minutes on each side. Check for doneness—you want it still a bit pink in the middle.

If the chops sear before the meat cooks through, pop the pan into a 400°F oven until they are cooked to your liking. For medium-rare, the temperature should be 145°F on a meat thermometer.

5. FINISH the zucchini: Sprinkle with the red wine vinegar, add the rest of the mint, and a few pinches of flaky salt to taste. Arrange the chops and the zucchini on a platter and serve with the yogurt sauce.

[2] One Pan & Done, an oven-to-table cookbook (photo © Clarkson Potter).

[3] One-Pan Wonders for casserole, Dutch oven, pan, skillet and slow cooker (photo © Cook’s Country).

[1] and [2] Mini carrot cupcakes are a lighter version of dense carrot cake. Here’s the recipe (photos © Kraft).

[2] These carrot cupcakes have a pinch of ginger and spiced cream cheese frosting. Here’s the recipe.

[3] Shred extra carrots and add them to a salad (photo © Stylepresso).

[4] Lactose intolerant? Use Green Valley Organics’ lactose-free cream cheese. You can also substitute ghee for butter, at a 1:1 ratio (photo © My Lilikoi Kitchen).

Yesterday we made carrot cupcakes. Mini ones. With a recipe from Kraft.

While we usually dig into a slice of dense loaf cake instead of airy cupcakes, we deemed these just right for Easter week.

We don’t add pineapple to our carrot cake, but the fruitiness was just perfect in these cupcakes.

Bring them to work, bring them to neighbors, or enjoy the entire batch at home.
 
 
A BRIEF HISTORY OF CARROT CAKE

According to the Carrot Museum in the U.K., food historians believe that modern carrot cake most likely descended from medieval carrot puddings.

During the Middle Ages, sugar and other sweeteners were expensive and difficult to come by, and carrots had long been used for their sweetness.

Printed recipes for carrot pudding have been found as far back as 1591, but no reference to carrot cake appears until the 19th century. Thus, we don’t know how cake got to here from there.

In the New York Cookbook (1992), Molly O’Neill says that in 1783, George Washington was served a carrot tea cake at Fraunces Tavern in lower Manhattan.

She notes that an adaptation of that early recipe, which was printed in The Thirteen Colonies Cookbook (1975), is quite close to the carrot cakes of today.

 
RECIPE: MINI CARROT CUPCAKES

Ingredients

For The Cake

 
For The Cream Cheese Frosting

1. PREHEAT the oven to 350°F. Combine and mix the eggs, egg white, sugar, oil and applesauce in a mixing bowl.

2. COMBINE all the dry ingredients in a separate bowl. Add the egg mixture to the dry ingredients and beat together. Add the carrots, pineapple, and pecans and mix again. Spoon into 24 lined muffin cups, filling about 2/3 full.

3. PLACE the pan on the middle oven rack and bake for 20 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into the middle comes out clean. Remove from the oven and let cool for 5 minutes; then remove from the pan. Allow the cupcakes to cool completely on wire racks before frosting.

4. MAKE the frosting. In a large mixing bowl cream together the butter, cream cheese and vanilla extract. Gradually beat in the powdered sugar. Add milk to the desired consistency. (Don’t make it too thin or the frosting will slide off the cupcakes.)

5. FROST the cupcakes with a small spatula, or use a pastry and tip for a fancier presentation (you can use a plastic bag with no top, as shown in photo #2). Garnish with crushed pecans, if desired.
 
  

February 21st is National Sticky Bun Day. Sticky buns and cinnamon rolls were the biggest treat of our childhood breakfasts: Better than waffles or pancakes.

The Horn & Hardart Automat, Americas’s first fast food chain, had such popular items that customers clamored to take them home. They set up a retail arm to package and sell some of them in retail stores.

Our family devoured many boxes of the honey buns. Today, they’d be called pecan sticky buns.
 
 
CINNAMON BUNS VS. STICKY BUNS: THE DIFFERENCE

The terms are often used interchangeably, but there are two categories of sweet yeast buns: cinnamon buns and honey (now called sticky) buns. Other terms include cinnamon rolls, cinnamon swirls, honey buns, and sticky buns, among others (cinnamon pecan rolls, e.g.).

All are made with a cinnamon swirl inside; they may have raisins as well.

But a honey bun or sticky bun needs to have a sticky topping: caramel, honey, maple syrup, or sugar syrup. These typically have a garnish of nuts. Those topped with white icing fall into the cinnamon bun category.

And only the sticky bun has its own holiday.

Now: What if you could bake a pan of sticky buns or cinnamon buns with ease, and bring them to the table warm and fragrant?

If this sounds like your kind of good time, McCormick has created the easiest recipe, an “overnight” casserole. But below we have recipes for:

 
 
THE EASIEST WAY TO MAKE “CINNAMON BUNS”

Mix five ingredients together the night before—bread, milk, cinnamon, and vanilla—just 10 minutes of prep time.

The next morning, just bake the casserole for 25 minutes until golden brown. It then gets a drizzle of cream cheese frosting: 30 minutes total.

We served it yesterday, and a very good time was had by all—with some leftover for today.

While the recipe is a casserole, you slice it into square, bun-size pieces. The difference:

 
 
RECIPE #1: OVERNIGHT CINNAMON ROLLS CASSEROLE

Ingredients For 12 Servings

 
Preparation

1. WHISK the eggs, 1-1/2 cups of the milk, 1 tablespoon of the cinnamon, 3 teaspoons of the vanilla, and the baking powder in a large bowl until well blended. Add the bread cubes and toss to coat well.

2. GENTLY POUR into a 13″ x 9″ baking dish, sprayed with no-stick cooking spray. Cover and refrigerate for at least 4 hours or overnight.

3. PREHEAT the oven to 350°F. Remove casserole from the refrigerator. Mix the melted butter, brown sugar, and remaining 1 tablespoon of cinnamon in a small bowl until well blended. Drizzle the over casserole. Let stand 10 to 15 minutes.

4. BAKE for 20 to 25 minutes or until golden brown. Meanwhile…

5. MAKE the cream cheese topping. Mix the cream cheese, confectioners sugar, and remaining 2 teaspoons of vanilla in a small bowl until smooth. Slowly stir in the remaining 3 tablespoons of milk.

6. REMOVE the casserole from the oven and let stand for 5 minutes. Drizzle over the casserole before serving.

[1] and [2] Overnight Cinnamon Roll Casserole. See the process step by step, from Gimme Some Oven (photos #1 and #2 © Gimme Some Oven).

[2] You can also serve the casserole as a dessert, with vanilla or cinnamon ice cream. You can even add a sprinkle of Grand Marnier.

[3] Sticky buns have a honey or other sticky topping, with chopped nuts. You can get them from Wolferman’s (photo © Wolferman’s).

[4] Conventional: A pan of cinnamon buns with their conventional glaze. Here’s the recipe from The Baker Chick (photo © The Baker Chick).

There are many Standards Of Identity defined by the USDA and the FDA, but buns and rolls are not among them.

Thus, there is no official answer. According to the American Institute of Baking:

 
So the answer is, there is no answer. Historic, regional, and family traditions often determine what is a bun and what is a roll.

You may buy hot dog and hamburger rolls, for example; we buy buns.

[5] Lemon Blueberry Muffin Casserole (photo courtesy McCormick). [6] A conventional blueberry muffin (here’s the recipe from Unwritten Recipes).

RECIPE #2: OVERNIGHT LEMON BLUEBERRY MUFFIN CASSEROLE

If you prefer blueberry muffins to cinnamon buns, McCormick adapted the muffin concept as well.

Prep time is 15 minutes the night before, and cook time is 30 minutes.

Ingredients For 12 Servings

For The Streusel Topping

 
For The Casserole

________________

*You can substitute twice as much lemon zest (2 tablespoons) for the lemon extract. You can also make your own lemon extract by soaking lemon zest in vodka for two weeks, and then straining out the zest.
________________
 
Preparation

1. MAKE the streusel: Mix the brown sugar, flour, and cinnamon in a medium bowl. Cover and set aside until ready to assemble in the morning.

3. POUR evenly into 13″ x 9″ baking dish sprayed with no-stick cooking spray.

4. MIX the cream cheese, the remaining 2 tablespoons each of milk and sugar, and the lemon extract in a medium bowl, until well blended. Gently stir in 1 cup of the blueberries. Spread evenly on top of bread cubes. Top with the remaining 1 cup of blueberries. Cover and refrigerate overnight.

5. PREHEAT the oven to 350°F. Remove the casserole from the refrigerator and let stand for 10 to 15 minutes. Meanwhile…

6. CUT the butter into the streusel mixture with a pastry blender or 2 knives, until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Sprinkle over the casserole. Bake for 30 minutes or until golden brown. Let stand 5 minutes before serving.
 
 

Steph of The Cupcake Project created a recipe called How to Make Cupcakes in Egg Shells.

But, if you decorate the eggs before serving, you have Easter Egg Surprise: an egg with cake inside.

It’s fun and memorable: Most people won’t have seen anything like it.

Here’s the recipe.

We took it one step further, using white eggs and decorating them.

This protects everyone from any bacteria on the egg, and protects the eggshells from any oils on hands that may prevent the dye from adhering.
 
 
HOW TO DECORATE CAKE EGGS AFTER THEY’RE COOKED

We used a wide paintbrush and took the advice of Incredible Egg to use water warmer than the eggs.

They also caution that hands should be washed in hot, soapy water before and after handling eggs—even if they’ve already been cooked or decorated.

Because a hole has been punched into the top of the shells to insert the cake batter (photo #1), you can’t fully dip cooked cake eggs in dye (well…maybe if you use dark chocolate cake, a bit of color won’t show).

Instead, you can try one of these three techniques.

 
You can practice the first two techniques with the raw eggs in your fridge (and return them for subsequent cooking).

Or, you can color whole eggs and then bake them in the oven to get hard boiled eggs.

The hard boiled eggs look and taste the same.
 

THE HISTORY OF EASTER EGGS

The tradition of painting hard-boiled eggs during springtime pre-dates Christianity. Fertility and rebirth are fundamental to life—not just for people but for the crops and animals that sustain them.

The most ancient known decorated eggs are 60,000 years old: engraved ostrich eggs found in Africa. Decorated eggs have also been found from prehistoric Egypt and the early cultures of Mesopotamia and Crete [source].

[3] Here’s how to get these beautiful colors, from Urban Comfort (photo © Urban Comfort).

The Christian custom of Easter eggs began among the early Christians of Mesopotamia, who stained eggs with red dye in memory of the blood of Christ (more).

The Easter holiday itself is named for the Germanic goddess Eostre (Eostra, Eostur, Ostara, Ostare, Ostern and other names), a fertility goddess. Her name derives from the ancient word for spring, eastre,

She was very popular with Anglo-Saxon pagans in Brittania as well, many of whom were descended from Germanic tribes who migrated to the island.

Eostre’s sacred animal is the rabbit, a symbol of fertility; and the egg is her symbol of fertile purity, both of which involve the spring and new birth.

In Old German, the month of April was called Ostar-manod: Easter month, or month of the Goddess Eostre. In Old English, it became Easter-monab (pronounced eh-AH-ster moh-NATH).

The English word April derives from the Latin aperire, to open (e.g. buds).