Entertaining for Easter

Gather round for an Easter celebration

The long Easter weekend offers lots of opportunities for entertaining friends and family. We enjoy getting together with our nearest and dearest, slowing down and catching up over a relaxed lunch or evening meal. And you don’t have to do all the work – we’ve shared two of our favourite recipes to help make hosting a little easier. Plus we always ask our guests to bring a little something to contribute too. Read on to see how we’re styling our table, which kitchen linens we’re using and what we’re eating this Easter.

DISCOVER KITCHEN & DINING

Hosting a crowd for Easter?

Lay a beautiful table for Easter dining and entertaining with our Sonoma Table linens. Made from yarn dyed cotton, the contemporary palette of charcoal stripes on natural offers a modern rustic look for easy charm. Style your table specifically to celebrate Easter by adding vases of fresh foliage or flowers, fragrant candles and little Easter themed items such as pottery or terracotta bunnies and painted eggs. Our Sonoma collection includes two sizes of tablecloth so you can host a crowd, a table napkin set of 4 featuring an embroidered bee motif and matching chair pads to make your guests feel comfy.

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Kitchen prep and clean up in style

Treat yourself to new kitchen linens for Easter to make your kitchen look beautiful, to assist with food prep and for doing the washing up in style. Our Tea Time kitchen collection celebrates the humble cuppa – and you might well need one after hosting a crowd. Made from hard-wearing cotton and featuring a ditsy floral design in muted hues, our Tea Time kitchen pieces also make for beautiful Easter gifting. Choose from an apron, double or single oven gloves and a tea towel set of 3.

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Recipe: warm roast vegetable salad

A beautifully simple accompaniment to any meal, our roast vege salad is delicious whether served warm in winter or cold in summer. For Easter, we suggest serving it warm along with a fresh green salad and protein of your choice.

Ingredients
4 x small red onions
3 x medium agria potatoes
1 x medium orange kumara
1 x small bunch of baby carrots
1 x medium beetroot

To dress
Fresh pesto and aioli

To garnish
Goat feta, pumpkin seeds or toasted slivered almonds, fresh basil. Optional – cherry tomatoes.

Method
Heat the oven to 180 degrees celcius.
In a large roasting pan, drizzle a generous amount of olive oil.
Peel red onions and cut into quarters.
Wash and peel the agria potatoes and orange kumara. Cut these into approx 3cm cubes – the main thing is they’re all a similar size so they cook at the same rate.
Cut tops and tails off carrots, wash and halve lengthwise.
Peel beetroot and cut into pieces bigger than the potatoes (they shrink a lot when roasted).
Put all prepared veges into your roasting dish and give a good mix around so everything is thinly coated in olive oil. Season well with salt and pepper.
Pop into the oven and cook for 45mins to 1 hour or until the potatoes are cooked through. Take out occasionally and stir veges around to prevent any sticking to the pan.

To serve
While still warm from the oven, turn veges out into a large flat serving bowl or platter then leave to cool for 10 minutes. Lightly dress with a 50/50 blend of fresh pesto and aioli. Garnish with crumbled feta, a scattering of pumpkin seeds or toasted slivered almonds and freshly torn basil leaves.
To serve cool, leave veges in roasting pan to cool down. Layer your serving bowl with red leaf or butterhead lettuce before adding the roast veges. Then dress as above. Can add halved cherry tomatoes for extra colour and bite.

DISCOVER AUTUMN ‘24

Recipe: a chocolately chocolate Easter cake

After asking around the office, the most popular chocolate cake recipe used by our Wallace Cotton team is the Chelsea Winter Crazy Italian Chocolate Cake. So we’re recommending this delicious recipe for an Easter treat. As one team member said “don’t be put off by the veganism aspect – this cake is insane!”. You could arrange a selection of chocolate Easter eggs on top of the cake for a finishing touch. Chelsea’s recipe serves 6-8.

Cake ingredients
1 ½ cups standard flour (or gluten-free flour mix without raising agent)
1 cup caster sugar
½ cup dark, good-quality baking cocoa (look for ‘dark’ on the label for best results)
1 1/4 tsp baking soda
3/4 tsp salt
1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil (or rice bran or grape seed or sunflower)
1 tbsp balsamic vinegar (or white, malt or apple cider vinegar)
2-3 tsp pure vanilla essence
1 1/2 cups water (or cooled coffee)

Chocolate icing ingredients
150g chopped dark chocolate (50% cocoa solids – use dairy-free if needed)
125g butter (or 150ml coconut cream)
1 tbsp olive oil, grape seed oil or rice bran oil

Method
Preheat the oven to 160c regular bake.
Grease a 20-22cm cake tin and dust all over with cocoa (make sure the tin isn’t too big or the cake will be a little flat). Or just plonk a piece of baking paper in. If your tin is too big, it won’t rise properly.
Sift the flour, sugar, cocoa, baking soda and salt into a large mixing bowl. Stir with a whisk to combine evenly. Make a large well in the centre.
Pour the olive oil, vinegar, vanilla and water into the well. Using the whisk, start in the middle and stir the mixture GENTLY in a circular motion until the mixture is combined to a smooth batter – don’t worry if there a few small lumps, these will disappear in the oven. Don’t go crazy or you’ll flatten all the bubbles.
Bake just below the centre of the oven for about 50 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the middle of the cake comes out clean. Remove the cake from the oven.
If you’re going to serve it as a cake, let it cool in the tin for 10 minutes before turning it out onto a rack. You can either dust with icing sugar to serve or ice it when cool (see below).
For a delicious pudding, dust with icing sugar and serve straight hot, straight from the tin, with ice cream. The cake keeps in an airtight container for about 4 days.

Chocolate icing
Place the chopped chocolate and butter (or coconut cream) in heatproof bowl, then set over a saucepan of simmering water (don’t let the water touch the bowl). Stir until melted, then remove the bowl from the saucepan stir in the oil.
Leave to cool at room temperature until it’s thick enough to spread on the cake. If you try and speed it up by putting it in the fridge, keep an eye on it as it will need stirring often.