Fun Easter food

I’m going to a few lunches with friends over Easter, and I’m trying to decide what food to take. These are picnic style lunches and we all bring food to share. Easter is a 4 or 5 day holiday in Australia, and since it’s usually also the last of the warm sunny weather before we slide into winter, a lot of people head off for their last holiday before summer. My friends and I generally  take the opportunity to eat outside weather permitting.

I’m planning to make these cute little chickie eggs — a variation on stuffed (or devilled) eggs. The zig-zag cut might be tricky, though. We’ll see. . . 

I was also tempted by these fabulous-looking tulips, made of boiled eggs and spring onions or celery stalks, but that looks even more fiddly.

I’ll also bake some biscuits (cookies) to give away. I was tossing up between traditional Easter biscuits (biscuits with currants, cinnamon and lemon zest) and a variation on my usual chocolate chip biscuits (made with condensed milk), the variation being to add in salted chopped macadamia nuts, but when I described the two choices to a friend, she made it clear that the chocolate and macadamia bikkies won. Well, it’s almost compulsory to have chocolate at Easter, isn’t it?

I was also tempted by these sweet little lamb biscuits — more the decoration than the recipe they came from, which didn’t get good reviews. Last year I made some bunny biscuits and iced them pink, which was fun. 

When I was a kid, Easter was a time of family picnics and barbecues somewhere out in the great outdoors. At the time we lived near the foothills of the Great Dividing Range, and would often stay with friends who had a beautiful log cabin outside Bright.  They were glorious times, and I blogged about them here.

Do you do or cook anything special at this time of year?