Easter Lemon Puffs

The Easter Bunny left me lots of loot at my mom’s house!!

Unfortunately I forgot to take a picture of my basket all filled up, but here’s some of the goodies that were inside!

• Dark Chocolate Covered Pretzels
• Dark Chocolate Eggs
• Mini Cadbury Cream Eggs
• A few Marshmallow eggs
• Chocolate bunny, of course
• The best Jelly Beans!

Holy Chocolate Overload!

On to my Easter dessert!

Lemon Cream Puffs with Raspberry Glaze
(more like sauce)

I started with my favorite/easiest Lemon Curd recipe! This recipe is from Cooking Light, and not only is it lighter in fat/calories, it’s much easier than traditional Curd recipes and tastes just as good! Even my mom loves it and she usually is skeptical when I do “lighter” versions of these kinds of things.

Once complete, I chilled the curd until I was ready to mix it with some freshly whipped cream to fill the puffs.

For the puffs/profiteroles, I used this Giada recipe which I made at Thanksgiving, but only made the part for the pastry puffs. (this whole recipe is incredible though if you’re wondering)

Cream Puffs/Profiteroles are actually very simple, but are one of those things that looks hard so it can be a great party item if you want to do something different!

Bring the butter, water, salt, and sugar to a boil. Then add flour.

Cool for 5 min, then quickly stir in 2 eggs, 1 at a time. At first it seems like the egg is never going to be able to mix in with the sticky dough but it will…just keep stirring!

Eventually you’ll get a nice shiny, sticky, dough!

I used a spoon to scoop the dough onto the pan, but also have a little bowl with water nearby because you’ll need to dip your finger in it to get the dough off the spoon and pat down any dough that’s sticking out of place. It’s VERY sticky, so you need a wet finger!

Finally they are brushed with egg and baked

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I once read in another recipe to poke a tiny hole in the shells once out of the oven to let the steam out while they cool, so I do this as well.

I made these the morning of Easter for maximum freshness!

Once I got to my mom’s I whipped up some heavy cream, folded in the curd, and filled the puffs.

You can use a pastry bag to fill them, but I just cut the tops off, spooned the cream in, and put the top back on :)

For the raspberry glaze, I purred some frozen raspberries, strained out the seeds, then added powdered sugar until it reached its desired sweetness/thickness.

I was hoping for a thicker glaze, but I didn’t want to keep adding sugar because it was sweet enough. So I ended up just drizzling the sauce over the puffs right before serving.

I’m not wild about the bright red color but they tasted awesome!

On to more important things…My Hair!

I have naturally very curly hair! Oddly enough I think I end up posting pictures on the blog most often when my hair is straightened, but I’d say 95% of the time my hair is left curly.

Here’s one of me from the summer that show’s how curly it is.

Now after months of thinking about it, I decided to go for it and get the Keratin hair treatment! I’ve talked to others who’ve gotten this done and they love it, and I love that it’s not permanent, it will only last 4-6 months, my hair will still have a slight curl to it but will be 100 times easier for me to straighten it, and it will be much more manageable for the summer!!

Currently it takes me at least an hour to straighten it myself…blow dry, then go over it all with the straightening iron. This should make it so I can just blow it dry straight pretty fast.

I went last night…here’s me before:

And after:

                    

Last night was when the solution was put into my hair…the downside is that I now can’t get it wet until I go back SATURDAY morning! This means no workouts for me until then :(  ...can’t get it sweaty!

I’ll use my weights at home, and go for walks, but that’s about all I can manage without getting sweaty…but this is worth it to me!

I’ll post the real After picture on Saturday when they wash it out and style it :)

It’s going to be summer weather here around Boston today!!