How do you celebrate Easter? Even though my kids are older now, and the Bunny has been found out, we still celebrate the holiday in much the same way we did when they were little. I make Easter Baskets of some sort for them. I hide eggs for them to find in an Easter Egg Hunt.
Tip: to keep your older kids interested, instead of candy or colored eggs, hide plastic ones with cash in them.
We have dinner with family and friends. I over-bake when I am entrusted with bringing the dessert course and then over-eat everything put in front of me. I always make “Church Window” cookies in honor of my grandmother. She always made them for me growing up because I loved them and she loved me. I still do the Easter Egg Hunt because my father loved to do that for us when we were little and so now I do it for my kids, but also to honor my dad.
I went for a walk on the beach this morning and was thinking about how Easter was my father’s favorite holiday (I think) and St. Patrick’s Day was my mother’s favorite. I wondered what my kids think my favorite holiday is?
Jennifer, owner of Somethin' Sweet Bakery in Sanford
Maybe it’s Sunday afternoon and 86 degrees and the last thing in the world you want to do is hang around the house with your cranky kids, since you yourself are very cranky. Here’s an idea: throw…er, put the kids in the car and drive over to Somethin’ Sweet Bakery, 883 Main Street Suite 1 in Sanford, next to Get Fired Up.
Jen opens for business Thursday through Saturday from 11:00am to 7:00pm and Sundays from 11:00am to 4:00pm. She may open other days as well; for example last Monday Jen opened for the 4th of July to provide excellent edible support for hungry (for Somethin’ Sweet!) parade go-ers.
Jen has always loved baking and that fact comes through loud and clear to anyone who has been lucky enough to enjoy any of the Whoopie Pies (try the Coffee-filled Chocolate Whoopies! They are amazing!), cookies, brownies, and other treats that you can find at her bakery. She changes up the flavors and items daily but of course, like the ice cream parlors always have vanilla and chocolate on hand, you can always find the old standbys (vanilla and chocolate cupcakes with vanilla frosting for instance) represented at Somethin’ Sweet! Jen is working on the new website for her business (somethinsweetmaine.com), but if you need a focal point for your (sweet) meditation today, check out the picture up there now. . . you will have no trouble sitting for 20 minutes if you are focusing on that.
Speaking of Somethin’ Sweet, the decor of the store, as well as the lovely store owner, are exactly that. Jen mentioned that she is working on some new offerings (this week she made caramel blondies..now that’s what I’m talkin’ about!), so keep coming back and check out what’s in the display case. You can also check out the daily flavors which she posts on Facebook. You may find that, despite the variety of options, your tween will always want the Cookie Dough Cupcake. Let her have it, as long as she stays away from your Chocolate Whoopie Pie with Coffee Filling…
🙂
Jen is taking Somethin’ Sweet on the road tomorrow (Monday, July 11) night. She will be at the Sanford Mainers baseball game at 6:30pm at Goodall Park, Roberts Street in Sanford. Why not eat a light supper then pile the fam in the car for an evening of baseball and baked treats?
My friend Charlotte asked me a question today: ” Who has the best cupcakes?” On the surface, it seems an easy enough question, right? Wrong! I tried to apply my “Keep it simple” philosophy to this question but found I was not able to.
I mean, come on!
So here goes my attempt to answer this question:
Cupcake Fetish Bakery, Main St. in Sanford. which has the best variety and most interesting flavors. Hello, The Elvis? Peanut butter, banana and bacon? Plus Tiramisu, Pink Lemonade, Drop Kick Murphy, Chocolate Kahlua…and I’m barely even getting started here. Plus the store has a little window into the kitchen so you can watch the actual cupcaking process as it happens! And the inside of the shop is decorated with cute cupcake paraphernalia that gives it a very fun atmosphere.
The Village Cupcake, Kennebunk. Owner Kristy Douglas was recently at the Keys to the Kitchen in Kennebunk to giving out cupcake decorating tips. She also brought along some mini cupcakes to sample. SO GOOD! Kristy sells her cupcake wares from her home so if you want to pick up a cupcake on a whim, this will not be your cupcake go-to person…I don’t think. Call her though; maybe she does keep some on hand for when the whimsy hits. Also, they have many interesting flavors (amaretto, hel-LO) and are open to creating new flavors at your request (Green Tea cupcakes? You betcha!). They also offer gluten-free cupcakes. 🙂
Tulips Cupcakery, Portland. These cupcakes can be purchased at Kamasouptra in Monument Square; check the website for other locations to buy. They describe themselves as “from farm to cupcake”, since they are inspired by and use local, seasonal ingredients in their recipes. If you are a person who loves strawberry cupcakes with strawberry frosting but doesn’t want any of those annoying strawberry chunks in the batter–you like ’em smoooooth–then these will be the answer to your strawberry cupcake prayers.
This post covers the above 3 businesses because they are the first 3 that came to mind! Apparently, I’ve never met a cupcake I didn’t like…
🙂
Of course, cupcakes made at home or by friends are really the best of them all!
My friend Susan told me to have a: “Happy Birthday!!! Enjoy the whole day and do what YOU want!!”
My response: “Well, since I’m working it will be hard to DO whatever I want, but instead I’m going to EAT whatever I want!”
🙂
So here goes: Day 2B of “The day I ate whatever I wanted”…I’m starting to fear that this is a slippery slope…better reign it in after today. This is what I did on the actual day.
I decided not to go to the gym so that I could sleep an extra hour. Good decision. I decided not to do any laundry and not to stop to gas up the car. Those things could wait. My mantra for the day: “If it’s not ‘all about me’, I’m not doing it.”
Breakfast: Decided to wait until I got to Portland then sprinted over to the Standard Baking Company (no website, unbelievably) to get a chocolate croissant. Monument Square was packed with dressed up, suited up people at 8am; usually it’s a ghost town on the weekend at that hour. I heard there was some sort of a convention going on which almost made me late for work (reference: “sprinted” to the bakery!).
Note: Around noon I started rethinking the whole shorts thing; may not have been the best idea…it barely made it out of the 50’s in Portland.
I continued to go where the whim took me. I didn’t follow any plan at all. I had two days to celebrate: the day before my birthday with my husband (which was awesome), and the birthday itself, which was kind of the icing on the (cup)cake after Friday.
For lunch, Micucci’s Pizza was a no-brainer. I was in luck too; they were just putting out the slabs of pizza when I ran up the stairs and grabbed one out from under the noses of the slower people assembling boxes to my right. When I ran down to pay I got to say “Hi” to the baker, Stephen Lanzalotta (author of The Diet Code), who was just putting out the fresh cannoli…I resisted, since I had a piece of tiramisu from my son and a chocolate coconut cupcake from Two Fat Cats waiting for me for later on. A colleague at work, Laurie, handed me a chocolate shortbread cookie chaser after lunch, which enabled me to save the cupcake for later.
🙂
Had to miss my regular yoga class (with Kristen of Windsong Yoga) in the morning so I was thrilled when a colleague Mary Ann said “Hey, want to do this yoga dvd with me at 2:00PM?” I just happened to have my mat in the trunk, so that’s what we did.
To balance it all out, I ate half the Micucci’s slab for lunch then had the other half with a salad (with greens from the garden) for supper, followed by the cupcake and my favorite (which is unfortunately seasonal) Keurig coffee that I saved from Christmas: Spicy Eggnog.
When I got home from work at 8:30PM I had a surprise waiting for me: gifts from the kids:
An adapter that allows me to play my MP3 in the car from my son Anthony that I’ve been wanting forever and
A handmade card with 3 dark chocolate covered cherries from my daughter Izzy.
What can I say? My kids know what I like. 🙂 My husband gave me my gift The Day Prior, but actually started it last fall. He got all of the raised beds ready for my fruit and vegetable gardens (not to mention most of the actual planting and watering thereof), and he bought many more lilac bushes for me (my favorite flower) and scattered them around the yard. He knows what I like too. :D.
Since my actual birthday fell on a day I had to work (and I had no way to get out of it!), my husband and I celebrated the day prior. The weather forecast called for a bleak, cold, rainy day. Does the weather influence what you eat? It certainly does me, so I had made a pretty extensive list of ideas for meals (as well as where to go for them!) and decided to see how the day actually turned out weather-wise before making any definite plans.
Well, the weather forecast was (as usual!) completely wrong. It was warm, sunny, beautiful. A day for eating outside, moving around, enjoying the sun. Based on that, here’s what we did.
First, split a bagel with peanut butter (him), almond butter (me), and honey. Went to gym. Ugh. Glad to get that out of the way. Similarly, got a few chores done (laundry, food shopping) so we had the rest of the day for ourselves.
For once, I had a coupon to use when I wanted to use it: we split a large coffee coolata with whipped cream from Dunkin Donuts. Next we went plant shopping for the vegetable garden. We stopped at Riverside in North Berwick and Gray’s in Wells. We bought some tomato plants, zucchini, summer squash, eggplant, watermelon, peppers.
With lunch in mind, we headed down Route One to Kittery. We decided to have a grazing day: stop at a bunch of places and eat a lot of food. First we went to Terra Cotta (no website) in Kittery. Everything there always looks so good that it’s hard to choose what to order…we settled on a Meatball and Ricotta Stromboli and a pasta salad, with one triple chocolate chunk cookie for dessert and ate it outside on their little patio.
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Next we looped back on Route One to Bob’s Clam Hut for fried clams. We briefly considered whether or not to order them crunchy or Bob’s way with a softer batter. We agreed on crunchy and it was a great decision. Then we took the long way back along the coast to see the ocean (sigh; love the ocean).
Then we went to When Pigs Fly to buy a loaf of brown sugar cinnamon bread which we had a hunk of for an afternoon snack with some coffee. Almost as good as my own bread. 🙂
Then home to get the seedlings in the ground. For supper, we decided to go to Big Daddy’s (no website) in Wells and have ice cream cones. I got what I always get, Kahlua Fudge Brownie, and it was as good as it always is. Bill got Coconut and Izzy got Maine Blueberry (in a wafer cone) and we switched cones periodically so we all got to try all 3 flavors.
Ice cream cones: they’re not just for breakfast anymore…
The planets somehow aligned last week. That’s the only explanation that I can come up with for this phenomenon that occurred at my place of employment. Are we a restaurant? A cafe? A bakery? No. We are an office full of nurses.
Yet we had 4 (count ’em) cakes to share during the work week. Birthdays, comings and goings, TGIF days…any of these are good enough reasons to let ’em eat cake. Some are store-bought, some are baked by colleagues…and we have some amazing bakers where I work.
The one in this picture was baked by Kathy (a fellow nurse) and this is just a small sample of the wonderful treats she bakes for us (which include breads, cookies, and whoopie pies, to name just a few things in addition to the cakes!). One bite of this cake and you completely forget that you are eight hours into your ten hour shift, your fourth one that week. Yep; those are raspberries in the midst of all that chocolate.
The next cake we had was this lovely chocolate cake with vanilla frosting from the Wild Oates Bakery in Brunswick. Shirley bought this cake for Pauline to celebrate her birthday this week. It was the best birthday at work ever!
We also had two other supermarket variety purchased cakes, one (you guessed it) chocolate with vanilla frosting and the other (sorry, didn’t get a picture of this one) was marble with vanilla frosting. We were inundated with cakes! Both of these were very good, but were eclipsed by Kathy’s homemade one and the Wild Oates bakery cake. Really though, it was a win-win situation for us all. Well, except for the people who avoid gluten. Sorry guys.
Easter is one of my favorite holidays, having somehow escaped the drama and bad memories with which many of the other major holidays are fraught for me.
Although the bunny is now known to be Mom and Dad by both kids, we continue the traditions that we started when they were little. We fill a basket (or receptacle of some sort) for each one and have an egg hunt. In the leaner years we used chocolate pirate coins to fill the plastic eggs for the hunt, otherwise we filled them with cash.
In the baskets? Candy, of course, gum, Tic Tacs, beef jerky (for the boy), lip gloss (for the girl), gift cards…things like that. What was not in the baskets? The dreaded plastic Easter grass, banned after the year that Dad was still finding it in various household crevices in December. 🙂
We were lucky to have a nice day weather-wise: sunny and in the low 70’s. The day before and after Easter it snowed! We had dinner with family, got to visit Dad at work and bring him some dinner, and still got home early enough for a normal bedtime for the tween (it was, after all, a “school night”).
Amy and Jen have been selling cupcakes and other small baked goods for a while now at their new bakery: Cupcake Fetish Bakery at 883 Main Street in Sanford, but Saturday was a special day: the official Grand Opening celebration.
They set up a three tiered table that was adorned with an assortment of mini cupcakes which were not only delicious…but they were also so cute!
In addition to the generous offering of free bite sized cupcakes was a plate of mini cinnamon buns with icing to sample. It was a smorgasbord of sweet baked treats!
When we arrived at around 2:30PM the little shop was packed with happy people: men, women, children, all with their tummies filled with yummy cupcakes. Amy came out with another tray of Snickers cupcakes after hearing someone say, “Oh! They got the last one!” People were sitting and chatting at the tables. Kids were bargaining with parents over how many cupcakes they could sample and buy. The common denominator: the smiles that people smile when their sweet tooth has been satisfied...big time. 🙂
“I’ve been baking all day!” Amy said, smiling as she restocked the case. Jen was busy helping us with important decisions. Which cupcakes? Should we get a few whoopie pies? Yes! Thank you, Amy! Thank you, Jen! We appreciate you both!
Reasons to go to the Cupcake Fetish Bakery today:
Your husband is in a funk and needs cheering up
You’re in a funk because yoga teacher made cupcakes for the class…the class that you couldn’t get to.
Your (amazing!) daughter got a 103 on her spelling test and a 106 on her science test and you want to celebrate.
It’s someone’s birthday and you want to give them a little something sweet.
The cupcakes (and everything else) at the Cupcake Fetish Bakery ROCK!!!
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Thank you, Amy and Jen, for opening your lovely little shop. We hope your business is supremely successful and that you are keeping us in cupcakes (and cinnamon buns and pupcakes and coffee cake and whoopie pies and muffins….) for a long, long time. 🙂
P.S. Maybe you could sell those bite sized cupcakes too? We LOVED them!
White chocolate chip, chocolate chip, and craisin cookies for bake off
My husband and I had planned to celebrate the day during the child-free hours we had, from 7am until about 3:30pm (the school day). There was a medical appointment (mine) at 10:30am, but that was quick and we didn’t let it mess up our day.
Which was good, because there were other things ready and waiting to do that. My daughter’s school is having a bake- off today and we thought that the cookies she was entering had to be there by 2pm Tuesday. Wrong. She called me at 9am to say the cookies actually had to be there by 2pm Monday, the day before.
Valentine’s Day. The day of our date. So, I scrambled to get the dough made before my appointment, then rushed home to bake them after my appointment. Got them to school at 1pm, ahead of the deadline, but that left us only a little part of the day to celebrate.
We had lunch a quick lunch at Jake’s Seafood on route one, then headed to the Harbor Candy store where (surprise!) they did NOT have any chocolate dipped strawberries, which was my purpose for going there. I was on a mission! That was the thing that I wanted. 😦 Plus, it was a little disconcerting to see that they had more Easter candy for sale than Valentine’s Day candy. Huh? When is Easter, anyway? (Hel-lo? It’s more than two months from now!)
Dark chocolate dipped strawberry from VFM
I always get a dark chocolate covered cherry and eat it at the counter when I go to Harbor Candy, but today was an exception. I was too annoyed. We left without buying anything, and we went into the Village Food Market in Ogunquit (just a few doors down) and (hurray!) they had a whole tray of them! Something finally went our way. They were even dipped in dark chocolate, my favorite, but Bill? not so much. I swear I’m going to convert him to the dark side, but my efforts thus far (with the dark side of candy, at least :)) have met with failure.
Next, to Ogunquit Beach to look at the ocean. Can you believe that it was 51 degrees at 2pm on Monday?? That was the best gift of all, dont’ you think?
Then we were headed home with about an hour left before the tween got off the bus from school when (surprise again!) she sent me a text saying that the after school activity was canceled and she was on her way home.
I mean, are you kidding me?
After homework, supper, laundry, and tween bedtime we got into bed to watch our Netflix movie: Glee: Season one: Disc one. Well, I laughed, I cried, yada yada. But hey, really, what better way to end your Valentine’s Day than a little Glee in bed? Ha!
Today was a day where not much went according to plan, so not the best Valentine’s Day ever, but that’s okay, because I have the best Valentine ever: my husband!
P.S. It’s day 5 but my bouquet is still looking great!
My Valentine’s Day started off great with a bouquet of flowers, with yellow (my favorite) being the dominant color. from my husband. I received them on Thursday night, since he would be at work for the next several days. I love flowers and was completely surprised (and thrilled!) with my gift.
I got to take my tween daughter Izzy out for lunch to celebrate our Valentine’s Day in advance. We went to one of “our places”, the Weathervane in Sanford and ordered way too much (fried) food, as we almost always do. After that, we continued up Route 109 to the Cupcake Fetish Bakery where we got dessert for ourselves, and we also picked up a little something for my son and his girlfriend (Chocolate Dream with vanilla buttercream frosting for Anthony, Strawberry Nirvana for Lauren). The baker made little cupcake bites up (see slideshow below) for free samples in honor of Valentine’s Day and they rocked!
We came home and Iz worked on her valentines to bring to school for her friends tomorrow, an eleventh hour decision. “This will be the last year, Mom,” she said. I recall her making the same statement to me just about a year ago…
Hmmm…we’re sitting here eating cupcakes for supper…it’s starting to feel sort of like Valentine’s Week (is that wrong?)… 🙂
How do you celebrate Easter? Even though my kids are older now, and the Bunny has been found out, we still celebrate the holiday in much the same way we did when they were little. I make Easter Baskets of some sort for them. I hide eggs for them to find in an Easter Egg Hunt.
Karen Creamer Author, Coach, Speaker 
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