some bunny loves you

With Easter just days away, I knew that a typical Easter basket for a 20 month old may not be what my daughter wants for her daughter. There’s plenty of time for her to have a more traditional Easter basket with chocolate, jelly beans and peeps. However, I thought small Easter basket with some sugar cookies may be more to my daughter’s likening.

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​I found a very good recipe on Martha Stewart’s website for Martha’s Easter Sugar Cookies. It was avery easy dough to put together, however, you must allow time for the dough to chill after making, after each step. After chilling the dough for the first time for 30 minutes, I chose the quick method of 10 minutes in the freezer for the remaining steps. The recipe gave a total time of 2 hours 45 minutes with a prep of 1 hour 20. I made my cookies over three days, one day to make the dough, one day to roll and bake and the last day I decorated them with homemade chocolate ganache. I also cut the recipe in half. As I was making 3” tall slender rabbit cutouts, I was able to yield approximately 20 cookies. (The recipe has a yield of 20-30). 
 
Once I decided to go with the 10 minute freezer step, the cookies moved along pretty fast. I will say rolling, cutting, and rerolling the scraps got old after a while. However, my delicate little rabbits turned out great. 
 
I didn’t want to make Royal icing to decorate the cookies as I find it too sweet for my taste and I’m sure, my daughter would agree. I had unsweetened Callebaut chocolate on hand and I found a recipe on epicurious.com that was for a chocolate cake with bittersweet chocolate ganache. The ganache uses 5 ounces of unsweetened chocolate, chilled butter, vanilla extract, heavy cream and some granulated sugar. It was so easy to make and also so delicious! It has a velvety consistency, just the right note sweetness and was easy to work with.
 
I tried a few variations of using the chocolate to decorate the cookies, I tried dipping just the ears, then the ears and head and finally the feet. I thought the feet look the best. I did, however, spread some ganache over the entire cookie for about a half dozen or so. 
 
My granddaughter loved her cookies. In fact, she ate the chocolate feet first. I'll have to indulge her next week and save her a chocolate covered bunny cookie.