#2 Easter Bunny Bread -- let's start baking, kids!

This recipe is easy to make, but you do need to be patient. The dough has got to rise twice! It's fun to model the bunnies. I also made Easter eggs in a basket with the dough. The breads are also delicious. I could eat these all year through! Let me know what you made. Send me a photo and I'll add it to this blog and also to a YouTube video.

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Kid-friendly recipe Sweet Bread for Easter Bunnies

Ingredients for the dough

220 g whole milk

1 tablespoon dry yeast

80 g fine sugar

80 g unsalted butter cubed

500 g plain white flour

1 large egg or 2 small eggs

half a teaspoon fine salt

Ingredients to glaze your bunnies and give them eyes

1 egg yolk (may be use the left over from challenge 1?)

few raisins or dried cranberries 

few sugar pearls

Step 1:
Read the full recipe and place everything you need ready on your work bench. That includes: your pot, butter brush, oven tray and baking paper, etc.

Step 2: Warm the milk at low heat in a small pot. Add the yeast. Check often, you don’t want it to get hot, or worse: boil. It should just become lukewarm. Pour the milk in a mixing bowl.
If you have a Thermomix, pour the milk with the yeast in the bowl.  Set the Thermomix at 37°C, speed 2, for 2 minutes.

Step 3: Add the rest of the bread dough ingredients to the bowl. Knead by hand to form a dough.
Or, set the Thermomix at 37°C, speed “stir”, for about 2 minutes. And then I still like to knead the dough a bit.

Step 4: Put the dough in a large bowl, cover it with a towel or cling wrap and let it rise for 1 hour.

Step 5: Use the brush and butter / oil, to line the oven tray with baking paper. Put the tray aside.

Step 6: Store away all the things you’ve used thus far away. Do keep the bag of flour and the oven tray on your work bench. Clean the table.

Step 7: Dust the part of the table that you’re working on with a bit of flour, as if it is snowing. Put your dough onto the “flour snow” and roll it into a thick cylinder, like a kitchen roll that’s lying flat on the table. Cut the dough in three equal parts. Then cut each part into half. Now you have got the dough for 6 bunnies. 

Step 8: Per bunny, cut the ball of dough in 4 pieces. Use one piece to make the head. Use the other three to make the body and little tail. Or you just make a head with 2 long ears up. You can be creative. Important, make sure all your bunnies are of the same thickness, otherwise the thicker bits will be undercooked and the thinner bits overcooked. That’d be a pity.

Step 9: Brush outsides of the bunnies with the egg yolk using your butter brush.

Step 10: Give the bunnies eyes with raisins or cranberries. Press the berries a bit into the dough so that they won’t fall off.

Step 11: Put the sugar pearls onto the bunny tails or to inside of the bunny ears. Again press the pearls softly into the dough.

Step 12: While you clean your work bench, give your bunnies some rest. Don’t touch them for another 40 minutes. 

Step 13: After 30 minutes of waiting, preheat the oven to 200°C / 390 F.

Step 14: Bake your bunnies for 15 minutes until golden brown. Stick a skewer or thin knife into a bunny to test whether they’re done. When the stick comes out with a bit of dough on it, then it needs another 5 minutes of baking. Repeat this untill the stick comes out clean. 

Step 15: Remove the bunnies from the oven and let them cool off for 15 minutes. 

Step 16: Take a photo and put it on your Facebook or Instagram feed. Tag @kidscookingchallenge and we will repost your photo. 

Enjoy the bunnies!! Bon appétit!

Tip

• When you’re feeling fancy, add small pieces of chocolate to the dough at step 4.