Easter Recipes You’ll Love!

Easter is upon us! This is a special time of year for many, requiring equally special meals to mark the occasion. Whether your family does Easter brunch, lunch or dinner, here are my picks for dishes to make your Easter memorable while stress free.

Prefer to browse at your leisure? Here’s my Easter super collection. It’s even sorted by course!

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Easter Recipes You’ll Love!

Lamb, Lamb, Lamb!

Here in Australia, Easter Sunday is all about roast lamb. I’m a bit of a lamb fiend, so there’s a few on my website! There’s surely one that’s exactly what you’re looking for….

• Classic – roast lamb leg with rosemary garlic gravy. STUNNER.

• My signature – 12 hour roast lamb shoulder (3 hour lamb is an excellent faster version). Why? Juicier and more flavour than lamb leg, and reheats 99% perfectly so you can make ahead whereas lamb leg is best served freshly cooked.

• Easiest – Slow cooker roast lamb leg

• Fan favourite – Greek slow roasted lamb leg with fall apart meat (also the rosemary garlic version)

• Premium – Lamb rack, crumbed or classic

• Boneless options – Greek butterflied lamb leg, slow cooked lamb shawarma shoulder, Moroccan lamb backstrap

• All my roast lamb recipes here

Roast lamb recipes

Baked Glazed Ham

Did you know that in the States (and Canada??), Easter is all about the great baked ham? Australia’s ham season is Christmas!

I have two glazed ham recipes to choose from – my signature Maple Glazed Ham and classic brown sugar glazed ham. Also useful – How to make glazed ham the day before and my glazed ham guide, a step-by-step how-to for those new to prepared glazed hams (including peeling the skin off, choosing the ham etc).

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Roast chicken

Roast Chicken remains as a firm favourite in Australia for Easter Sunday. There’s no better way to cook chicken than to keep it whole – keeps all the juices in!

Choose from my signature garlic butter roast chicken, an easy Lemon Garlic SLOW COOKER Roast Chicken and the infamous Juiciest ever (no brine) roast chicken in my cookbook. If you’ve got the time, soak your chicken overnight in a flavoured brine which will lock in juices and flavour the flesh.

For something a little different, try this Coconut Lemongrass Whole Roast Chicken (the coconut broth is incredible!) or Jamie Oliver’s famous Chicken in Milk (sounds weird, reads weird, tastes incredible).

And if the thought of man-handling a whole chicken is all too much for you this year, there are plenty of recipes for baked chicken pieces – I mean, that’s basically a roast chicken that’s been cut up, right??! 😊

Try baked herb roast chicken (thighs and drumsticks) or crispy baked chicken legs. For Asian flavours, look no further than everybody’s favourite sticky Honey Soy Baked Chicken. It’s a winner every time!

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Fish and seafood

Can we look beyond the fan-favourite Christmas baked salmon – for Easter??? I’m not sure we can!!

An outrageously great combination of flavours – honey butter glazed salmon with a creamy dill spread topped with a dried fruit nut rubble – this was an impromptu invention that’s become a favourite with readers, family and friends. Easy enough for anyone to make, make-ahead / prepare ahead, great served hot, warm or at room temperature, easy to scale up or down (make fillets).

More fish / seafood options

Despite my total bias towards the Christmas baked salmon (for Easter) as a centrepiece option, I have some other great options for Easter-worth seafood / fish mains!

• Whole Baked Fish with Garlic & Dill Butter Sauce – Any chef will tell you that the easiest and BEST way to prepare fish is to cook it whole because you get the juiciest result. This is a classic preparation with a to-die-for butter sauce that’s super easy to make.

• Fish Pie – Tender flakes of fish in a creamy sauce with vegetables, eggs studded throughout and mashed potato topping. All sorts of goodness!

• Garlic prawns (shrimp) – I feel like Easter is a worthy time for a giant pile of juicy garlic prawns! An Aussie favourite, the trick to this dish is to add the garlic towards the end of the cooking time else it burns, and add a splash of white wine. Makes all the difference! (Also – the creamy version here.)

• Parmesan Crusted Salmon with a Lemon Cream Sauce was the fan favourite until Christmas baked salmon stole the top spot. Is it time to make a come back?? 😂 That crunchy crumb with the rich salmon flesh is a stellar combination, plus the sauce clings to the crumb so you get more in each bite. Easy, can be made ahead, transports well, is even great served at room temp and that cream sauce is crazy good!

• Spanish seafood stew – An iconic cookbook exclusive dish, made with a medley of seafood in a flavour loaded tomato sauce, many people have tried this now and everyone has been blown away by the flavour! I really hope you try it one day. ❤️

• A big pile of freshly cooked prawns or other cold seafood with a selection of Seafood Sauces.

• Beetroot Cured Salmon or Salmon Gravlax for something real fancy at a fraction of the cost of buying (and it’s crazy easy!).

• A cosy Seafood Gratin Pasta Bake in a creamy white sauce. Cost effective seafood option using a seafood marinara pre-mix!

More seafood and fish recipes for Easter here.

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Cosy Sides

Reader Favourites

• Baked Mac and Cheese (be still my beating heart!)

• Roasted Vegetables – It takes a little more thought than throwing vegetables in a pan and shoving it in the oven!

• Julia Child’s Potato Dauphinois (better than scalloped potatoes because the sauce doesn’t go gluggy)

• Duck fat potatoes – the crunchiest roast potatoes in the world – or truly crunchy non-duck-fat roast potatoes

• Garlic Bread (be extra generous with butter!)

• The unexpectedly extremely popular Mushroom Rice

• Breads – the famous No Knead Crusty Artisan Bread and the No Knead Dinner Rolls

Handy / effortless – Make-ahead Mashed Potato Casserole, Easy Creamy Cheesy Potato Bake,  Baked Mushroom Rice

Wow Factor – Crispy Smashed Potatoes, Mini Potato Gratin Stacks, Roasted Sweet Potato Stacks, Crispy Parmesan Crusted Potatoes, Spiral Sweet Potato Bake

Room Temp Sides – Mrs Brodie’s Famous Potato Salad, Macaroni Pasta Salad, Italian Pasta Salad, The most amazing avocado pasta salad

Click here to browse my entire Sides recipe collection.

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Salads

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Firm Favourites – Roast Pumpkin Salad with Feta, Brussels Sprout Salad (this converted haters!)  Roasted Sweet Potato Salad, Iceberg Lettuce Dill Salad (iceberg lettuce never tasted so good), Coleslaw.

Wow Factor – Strawberry Spinach Salad with Strawberry Vinaigrette, San Fran Salad with Yoghurt Ranch Dressing (skip the chicken), Pig Out Salsa (named as such for obvious reasons).

Effortless – 12 minute Sun Dried Tomato Couscous Salad, Throw Together Rocket Beetroot Walnut Salad, any of these dressings with your salad of choice: Fresh Lemon Dressing (in the Couscous Salad), Honey Lemon Dressing, Honey Mustard, Italian Dressing, French Vinaigrette, Poppyseed, Maple Syrup Dressing.

All my salads here!

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The Grande Finale

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Pictured above is my new “go to” Chocolate Cake which my friend Jo from Jo Cooks calls a “lazy a** cake” because it’s so crazy easy! It’s beautifully moist with a soft crumb, it truly tastes of chocolate (it’s surprising how many chocolate cakes don’t actually taste of chocolate) and there’s every possibility you have everything you need to make it right now.

Here is the Chocolate Cake recipe! PS I got the cute little furry chooks and speckled eggs to decorate the cake from Woolies.🐣🐣🐣

More recently, I’ve done a variation of this Easter cake using my Vanilla Cake, that has a charming pastel blue icing and coconut nest for the eggs!

Here are some more suggestions for dessert – or browse my entire Dessert / Sweet Treats collection.

Things I have a soft spot for – Red Velvet Cake (it’s sooooo velvety!) Pavlova (so very Aussie!), Carrot Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting, Apple Crumble (always and forever), Apple Cake (the fragrance of the spices kills me every time), Salted Caramel Tart (the caramel filling is epic).

Show Stoppers – This Never Ending Meringue Tart is guaranteed to draw a round of applause when you present it (and unlike Pavs, you can make ahead), a Trifle is always a stunning looking centrepiece. My friends are obsessed with this Classic Baked Cheesecake with its high wall of biscuit crust, and if mangoes are in season where you are, try this stunning No Bake Mango Cheesecake! Also worthy of mention: Chocolate Cream Pie.

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And let’s not forget….HOT CROSS BUNS!!! Psst – I’ve included the classic kneaded recipe AND a no knead recipe, and yes there is a recipe video. 👍🏼

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Phew! That is a LOT of food. Hope there are some Easter recipes here to inspire you – it’s certainly given me some ideas for my own Easter Feasting menus which I hadn’t starting thinking about until right now, as I’m writing up this post.

Wishing you a Happy Easter filled with family, friends, laughter and lots of delicious food! – Nagi x

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Life of Dozer

Multiple choice – Dozer looks:

a) like he’s about to march in the Mardi Gras;
b) thoroughly in the spirit of Easter; or
c) completely humiliated.

PS Don’t worry, that’s a doggy friendly Easter Egg!