Newsletter: 🐣 Easter goodies galore + a supersized offering for your Cookbook of the Month 📚

🐣 Easter goodies galore + a supersized offering for your Cookbook of the Month 📚

🐣Enjoy cooking this Easter & save 25% on ckbk membership 🐣

Happy Easter!

Easter—this year celebrated across the long weekend of April 3 to 6—is the Christian festival commemorating Christ rising from the tomb. A festival that has come to be symbolic of the beginning of Spring, with all its new life and green shoots—hence the abundance of eggs, lambs, bunny rabbits and chicks, including all those chocolate ones.

Lamb is traditional at the centre of the Easter table. Explore our collection of recipes—Take a Leg of Lamb—and find a dozen options. Including a Gigot de Sept Heures that ends up so meltingly soft you should be able to cut it with a spoon, and this Indian Amaretto Lamb Raan from Nisha Katona, which features a little demonstration video with the recipe to help you.

Easter Baking Around the World gathers together some traditional and favorite bakes that the holiday wouldn’t be complete without.

Whether you are a lover of Hot Cross Buns, Simnel Cake or Ligurian Easter pie Torta Pasqualina, you’ll find the recipe in our collection.

Of course chocolate is synonymous with a modern Easter celebration, and we have Chocolate by Trish Deseine newly live on ckbk just in time—find an array of chocolate goodies, including this rather elegant Small Moulded Chocolate hare.

Find all 114 recipes in Chocolate by Trish Deseine

Pictured above: Simnel Cake from World's Best Cakes by Roger Pizey

Passover dishes for seder suppers

The Jewish holiday of Passover begins on the evening of April 1 this year. This eight day holiday celebrates freedom after the exodus of Jews from Egypt, and is observed by Jews all over the world.

After candles are lit, the celebrations begin with a special dinner, called a seder, at which some foods are of particular importance. Bitter leaves, or herbs, symbolise the bitterness of life in slavery. Matzah (or matzo) are essential—this unleavened bread symbolises the bread that Jews took on that first journey. Unleavened because they didn’t have time to let the bread rise before leaving, and light and portable for the journey ahead. No other bread is eaten across Passover—so here are a host of recipes built around them.

For the feast itself take a look at our Passover Menu—find Matzo Ball Soup, Latkes, this slow-cooked Israeli Sabbath Brisket, and more. The celebrations wouldn’t be complete without some sweet stuff, and these Chocolate Matzos, from newly added book Babka, Boulou & Blintzes: Jewish Chocolate Recipes from Around the World, perfectly fit the bill. As author Michael Leventhal writes of this recipe:

"I set about concocting this treat in an effort to gather the flavours of both East and West in one little Passover goody: thin, crisp, caramelised toasted matzos (ancient Jewish traditional flatbreads), with a thick layer of dark chocolate, a hit of sea salt and the Asian flavour of crystallised ginger. Fresh rosemary boosts the ginger, but it is not necessary. If you keep kosher, you’ll notice it’s pareve, that is, it may be eaten with either a dairy or meat meal. Use the best chocolate you can find, of course."

A happy, healthy Passover to all who are celebrating.

Find all 70 recipes on Babka, Boulou & Blintzes

Our Cookbook(s) of the Month for April

As a seasonal treat we are featuring not one, not two, but three newly added cookbooks for our #ckbkclub Cookbook of The Month for April.

Consider this is your invitation to indulge and whip, bake, stir and cook up a host of treats for the holiday.

We have two books from Michael Leventhal, Babka, Boulou & Blintzes: Jewish Chocolate Recipes from Around the World as mentioned above—this book is a trip through the history of chocolate in Jewish food and culture—and The Ultimate Cheesecake Cookbook: Recipes from Around the World—a whole world of cheesecake for you to discover! Finally, and also mentioned above, is Trish Deseine’s Chocolate bringing the overall treat quotient to the maximum!

But whether you bake a batch of Tahini Chocolate Chunk Cookies with Sea Salt, or a White Chocolate and Pistachio Cheesecake, or this Chocolate Lime and Passionfruit Pavlova, don’t forget to take pictures and share with us. If you haven’t taken part before, all you have to do is join us on Facebook at ckbk, and post your photos and comments. We can’t wait to see what you make!

Join our Facebook group #ckbkclub

Ingredient focus: arugula (rocket)

Rocket, or arugula, is a salad plant which grows wild in Asia and the Mediterranean region, and is now globally popular.

The name ‘rocket’ comes from the French roquette, while ‘arugula’ is a Southern Italian dialect form of the Italian rucola.

It has a peppery, horseradish taste, that is a great addition to salads, and also works well as a component of cooked dishes such as pasta, omelette or quiche. Explore our collection of 12 Ways with Arugula, to find Rocket Pesto, a Fennel, Rocket & Orange Salad, and this Frittata with Turkey Sausage & Arugula.

6 of the best caramel recipes

Caramel, that transformation of sugar into something with glorious toasted depths of flavor. The French know how to make caramel, taking it to the edge to achieve maximum impact with minimum sweetness. If you are a caramel lover we have Trish Deseine’s Caramel book newly added to ckbk. And here are six more caramel delights to add to your must-make list.