Life This Week 17/4/2017: Special Times To Remember.

It’s been one of those rare and special weeks for us that we’ve spent mostly in staycation mode. Free of the pressures of packing, planning for and then actually reaching a holiday destination, the last four days have still been busy but a whole lot less regimented than usual. It’s been a time for me to recharge, step away from routines and wander off to do wildly exciting things like blog or read at odd hours of the day and night. The promise land that keeps you keeping on with the daily grind on order to reach one or two times a year.

All in all, it’s been the staycation of my dreams.

Good Friday began as I meant it to continue with a breakfast of hot cross buns eaten in my active wear. I’m loving my new Lorna Jean tights sick right now. I’m at that stage of my love affair with their promise and delivery of ‘compression’, ‘core stability’ and ‘ultimate support’ that I’ve spent much of the long weekend engineering reasons that I need to stay in them beyond the 45 minutes or so a day that I spend exercising in them. I’m sure those few extra hours of wear the other day helped combat my epic case of hot cross bun hangover…

Easter, like Christmas is one of those holidays that lends itself well to a home baking project. I tried to keep things relatively simple and chocolate-centric this year with Love Swah’s Dark Chocolate Brookies. Brookies are what they sound like, a cross between a brownie and a cookie. Preschooler SSG was on hand to help me melt the .. 350g .. of dark chocolate required to make a batch of brookies.

While I was in charge of higher level things like making the cream cheese frosting. Note my Keep Cup full of instant coffee powering the morning’s preschooler assisted baking. I had just assumed all our local cafes would be shut for Good Friday but it turns out the cafes down the road were and will be open for the entire break.

The frosting features an abundance of crushed mini easter eggs, I went for the M&M version because of the pretty colours of their shells.

The brookie batter is dolloped onto a lined baking tray and the backed cookies have a glossy, cracked crust to them.

The end result are these rich yet soft biscuits sandwiched by a rainbow coloured cream cheese frosting. So much easier to make than hot cross buns but just as delicious in their own decadent way.

We’ve been blessed with such amazing weather this Easter too. I took Preschooler SSG and his scooter down to our local beach to make the most of the late afternoon sun. Mid autumn gives the beach such a different feel and look to the summer. It was all greys, bare branches and bleached wood as we made our way in the sand.