Caramel Shortbread Bunnies

Easter is fast approaching and it's an amazing time for baking. I've had a whale of time over on Pinterest looking at Easter themed recipes from cakes with hidden orange carrot cakes inside, to chocolate covered strawberries to the traditional hot cross bun, and inspired by it all I went on a little shopping trip a while ago to my nearest and best cookshop to fulfil my needs for some Easter treats.

And first up on the list of things to make was these deliciously cute caramel shortbread bunnies. I got the idea for making them when I had a sudden urge to bake something other than cakes, and remembered a great caramel shortbread recipe from BBC Good Food. I got the recipe up and got baking away.

One of the first hurdles you might encounter with this bake is making the caramel. Every recipe I've come across makes it sound so easy: "Combine light muscovado sugar with condensed milk and heat gently until sugar has dissolved. Turn up the heat until boiling, stirring constantly until thickened." If only it were that simple and not a devil to make in reality! My first ever batch of caramel was gloopy in the worst way and horribly bitty where lumps of sugar weren't broken up or dissolved. So my top tips for making perfectly smooth and clear caramel are 1) when you think all the sugar is dissolved, keep on a low on heat until you're certain all the sugar is dissolved. Don't rush! 2) Really do stir constantly. Your arm will ache and you'll get frustrated, but it's totally worth it. 3) Caramel goes from thick and creamy to glutinous and icky faster than you can blink if you're boiling it too hard. Be careful with the heat levels and take it off when it's just thickened.

Now at this point, after the caramel, I didn't actually know yet I wanted to make little bunny shapes, but along the way I knew I wanted something to be a little different about these treats that made them super fun to make. So having a little think, I eventually whipped out my bunny shaped cookie cutter I picked up for 79p (bargain in my mind!) and left it aside for later.

Something else needed to be different though. And the last thing left to play around with was the chocolate. Poking around my kitchen I ended up finding that I had plain milk chocolate and dark chocolate galore, so in separate pans I melted them both (gently - chocolate is as terrible as caramel if on too high) and poured each one into my two tins of biscuit and caramel.

Once set (this can take anything from 20 minutes to 40 minutes), I got to work cutting out my shapes. A little tip here too if you're going to try different types of chocolate: dark chocolate works very differently to milk. I had a fight with my dark chocolate batch trying to cut out neat shapes. It cracks easily and is harder to push through initially. What worked for me in the end was rather than pushing with brute force from the offset, I essentially hammered the cutter through the layers and then pushed the finished shape gently out of the cutter. It takes time, but if you haven't noticed yet, plenty of this recipe is about patience!

(my patience wore thin with my chick shaped cutter - little beaks and little feet are too delicate for this!)

All the work and time pays off though when you're left with a plate of delicious treats that are fun to share with anyone at Easter, young or old. They went down a storm with my friends at uni!

What are your favourite Easter bakes?