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Six dessert recipes to try this Easter
Happy (early) Easter! Whether you celebrate the holiday or not, we have some good recipes for you to try.
What's on the menu in your home? Maybe a modern-day classic like Mairitsa's Greek Easter soup or roasted lamb and kale, with spring peas and herbed potatoes on the side.
My family's Easter dinner is very similar to what we eat at Christmas and Thanksgiving. Seafood gumbo, honey baked pork, and cornbread dressing are holiday staples for us. Sometimes we add green beans, potatoes, and sweet potato pie for a little variety.
But more often than not, the menu is full of salty dishes and a few sweet ones.
What better time to change things than now?
We've scoured countless recipes in our archives to help you end your Sunday with dessert.
With the help of my colleagues and Times contributors, I'll enter this holiday with more recipes than I can cook.
Here are six to sweeten your holiday:
Chocolate cream eggs
(Glenn Koenig / Los Angeles Times)
When I think of Easter, eggs immediately come to mind. Whether the milk chocolate shells are boiled or egg-shaped. Recreate Cadbury Creme Eggs with this recipe. It takes an hour and a half and makes 3½ dozen eggs.
Spring Lemon Meringue Pie
(Kirk McCoy / Los Angeles Times)
To make this pie, you need an early start. But you can roll and puff the dough the night before. Make the pie filling close to the baking time, as the meringue mixture must be prepared at the last minute. Total preparation time is 1 hour and 15 minutes, plus 1 hour for cooling, enough for eight people. Here's the full recipe.
Shortbread bars with dark caramel and chocolate
(Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times)
Who doesn't love a Twix bar? This Twix-like recipe makes buttery shortbread bars with a thick caramel topping. It takes two hours, and you should end up with about fifty (3½-inch) pieces.
Chocolate macaroon
(Kirk McCoy / Los Angeles Times)
Add a little French flavor to your dessert menu this year. The cookie itself doesn't have much flavor. So, to get the full measure of your macarons, you need to make sure each piece has cookies and filling. You get the texture from the cookies, but you get the flavor from the filling. This recipe takes 1 hour and makes 24 to 30 sandwich buns.
Vegan carrot and banana cake
(Ben Mims / Los Angeles Times)
We have an easy recipe for vegan carrot cake that might even be better than the original! The bananas replace the eggs, binding the mixture and giving the cake texture. Pro Tip: Use bananas whose peels have turned black for the best flavor. The recipe takes an hour and 20 minutes, and serves eight to 12 people.
Honey cake vending machine
(Sylvia Razgova/For The Times)
Fans of cellophane-wrapped honeycakes will love these soft, spongy homemade honeycakes. Plus, they're healthier without all the chemicals that keep vending machine copies preserved for years on end. This recipe makes eight cakes and takes 1 hour and 10 minutes, plus three hours of proofing.
Biggest stories of the week
Fast food restaurants abound on this part of Crenshaw Boulevard.
(Allen J. Chapin/Los Angeles Times)
High prices of fast food
Parking at Hollywood Bowl
Gambling scandal, translated by Shohei Otani
Diddy's investigation into sex trafficking
Documentary film “Quiet on the Set”.
More big stories
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First column
The First Column is the Times' home for narrative and long-form journalism. Here's a great piece from this week:
Tteok-bokki rice cake from the food court at Source OC in Buena Park.
(Jenelle Fung/For The Times)
How a mall became a cultural hub for Orange County's newest Koreatown. This Asian-centric entertainment and dining destination offers a unique concentration of Korean culture just a few miles from the newly named Koreatown in Buena Park.
More great reads
How can we make this leaflet more useful? Send comments to basiccalifornia@latimes.com.
For your weekend
HAVN, a floating sauna, is located in Vancouver Island's Victoria Inner Harbour.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
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Legal trouble for a member of the Dodger star's inner circle? Plus nine other questions from our weekly news quiz.
For your information: Yesterday's newsletter reported that Allstate stopped offering new title policies in California after State Farm's announcement in June 2023. Allstate stopped offering new policies to California customers in November 2022.
Have a great weekend, from the Essential California team
Kevinisha Walker, multi-platform editor
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