When I was a kid, we celebrated every Easter with my entire family.  We'd go to church for Easter service, we'd have a giant Easter egg hunt at my aunt's house, and then we'd have a huge Easter meal.  The holidays with my family were always joyous events.  Growing up in a close-knit family, we really enjoyed spending lots of time together.  My cousins were all like siblings to me, and my aunts, uncles and extended family were like second parents to me.  Of course, my grandparents were the patriarch and matriarch of the family and they were the glue that held us all together.

Now my cousins, brothers and I are all scattered all over Quebec and Ontario.  We live hours away from each other and I have since had to form my own traditions for my own little family.  It truly breaks my heart to know that Little One won't experience the wonderful childhood I experienced.  I know hers will be a great one and she won't know what she's missing.  It's just that family is so very important to me and having her cousins 11 hours away is just really heartbreaking.  I get homesick during the holidays.

Thank goodness she has her grandparents here! She also has a few members of Hubby's family here, but life is so busy and we seldom see them.

I want to create some new traditions for Little One to look back on and remember with fondness.  Today, Little One's babysitter and friend came over and baked "Easter Cupcakes" with her.  They're basically "rainbow cupcakes" and they are so pretty!
{EASTER CUPCAKES}
Ingredients:

Dry Ingredients:
2.5 c flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt

Wet Ingredients:
1/2 c milk
1/2 c vegetable oil
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 c butter
1 c sugar (we used Dememera)
3 eggs
Food colouring (red, blue, yellow, green)

Instructions:

• Line two 12 cup muffin tins with paper baking cups (so you have two dozen). Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
• Stir dry ingredients in a large bowl. 
• Whisk together wet ingredients in another bowl (except for the butter and sugar - beat those ingredients together in a large bowl until fluffy). Add together and add eggs, one at a time.
• Pour dry mixture into wet mixture. Mix until evenly blended.
• Take four bowls and evenly distribute batter into each. Add a few drops of food colouring to create the shades you desire. We did blue, pink, green and purple. Make sure to mix well.
• With a different spoon for each different colour of batter, take a spoonful of batter and spoon it into each cupcake liner. Keep adding a colour at a time, making sure not to mix/blend the batter. It should look like layers of different colours. 
• Bake in preheated oven for 15 to 20 minutes. We found that 16 minutes was just about right.

Aren't those the coolest cupcakes ever? I'm going to have to tweak the recipe so that it doesn't call for that much sugar or fat. I'm not too keen on the amount of oil, butter, sugar, and eggs in them. Basically, use whatever white/vanilla cupcake batter you normally use (I suppose if you're not a baker, you could use boxed cupcake mix).  Then divide into different bowls for different colours of batter.

Little One was so impressed with how pretty the cupcakes were, but the funny thing is that she didn't eat them!  For some reason, she's not much of a cake person. Oh, well! More cupcakes for Dad, then!