A litter of chocolate Easter bunnies!

Not everyone celebrates Easter as a religious holiday and children remember it mainly for the Easter bunny and Easter egg hunts. I know I looked forward to it as a child because my mum would mount an indoor Easter egg hunt for us kids after Easter Mass. She would hide chocolate Easter eggs, and the real treasures were the special large sugar eggs that you could crack open to find more little candies inside. Our Easter tradition hardly varied for many years. We would all get up early and get into our Sunday best and go to church. After church, we would all drive down to the Magnolia ice cream plant and Papa would buy a 5-quart Easter ice cream cake. Then home for the Easter egg hunt while Mama prepared dinner. When we were older, Papa would drop us off at home and then pick up the ice cream cake, which we waited for, excited to see what design he would bring. My brothers were excited too about the dry ice that was packed around the cake, because then, they could fill a tub of water in the bathroom, living room, or carport, and drop the dry ice into it to create a cool fog that spilled over into the rest of the house. The best thing about it was that it was SOLID ice cream, with the most delicious creamy frosting (unlike our DQ cakes which have a cake layer under the ice cream). We would have a different design each year, but on most years we would have either a bouquet of ice cream Easter lilies and daisies or a solid ice cream Easter bunny and eggs. Each of the 4 of us (my sister had not yet been born, and until she was old enough to pick for herself, she’d just have whatever we served on her plate) would pick our choice but still get whatever my mum put on our plates if she was the one serving. Of course, the ice cream cake was the pièce du resistance, after a glorious Easter ham that mama had ironed with sugar and glazed pineapple. I don’t remember when the tradition stopped for us, because after High School, I left home and hardly visited. When the grandchildren came, however, the Easter egg hunts resumed and I know my children, nephews, and nieces, have as fond memories of Easter Sunday at Mama’s as I do.

~cpl 2015