Our (Simple) Veggie Easter

Easter has never been a "big" holiday in my family; growing up we celebrated with candy and the occasional egg hunt, but just as often had a traditional Seder for Passover. For my husband on the other hand, Easter was and continues to be an important family holiday.

Since we didn't have any other plans this year, I decided to take the day and cook up a vegan Easter meal for my husband and sister-in-law.  I've never really cooked a whole holiday meal before, so I kept it pretty simple and made things I've made before or looked easy enough on Pinterest.  Good ol' Pinterest.

yum yum!  The menu: smashed red potatoes, roasted brussels sprouts with apples, eggplant and tempeh pot pies, biscuits, and lemon pound cake.

You know those recipes on blogs where the blogger thoughtfully (and beautifully) lays out all the ingredients in a big photo spread before they start?  I always wanted to do that so....BAM.  There you go:

Making the lemon pound cake: Almost entirely vegan (the jelly beans I used for decoration contain beeswax).  I almost always use bottled lemon juice when recipes call for lemon, but this time I squeezed real lemons like a real adult!

There's this great store nearby that sells all sorts of hard-to-find and random kitchen wares.  I really wanted to make this lamb cake that I found online, and convinced that the store would have a lamb cake tin, waited til Saturday to go over and pick one up.  Well, they didn't have lamb tins.  They had hearts or stars.  So I grabbed a star tin and decided it would be a star Easter cake.  I had already bought decorations in anticipation of decorating a lamb, so I just improvised and used those on the star cake.

I really had no idea what to do for decorating the cake.  I ended up just sticking some jelly beans on and tracing the star shape in gel. 

The cake came out pretty well!  I forgot to account for the fact that in a double sided lamb tin it would have been half as much batter baking, so mine took a lot longer to get the center cooked.  The edges were in turn a little crispy, but it was fine.  The whole apartment smelled like lemon while it baked, it was glorious!

Cheese and crackers!  Daiya makes delicious, spreadable cheeses.  Bottom left: the eggplant and tempeh pot pies.  Bottom right: a pretty platter we got for our wedding but never used.  It got some action as the potato plate today!

Those mini pot pies are delicious, and pretty easy to make.  My mom made them for Thanksgiving one year and I had been waiting for a good excuse to make them (though they are pretty simple I think they could be a good meal any day!).

I wanted to take a picture of us all dressed up, but the universe conspired against me to get a good shot.  Rest assured, we looked fabulous.

Here's the recipes I used for our meal:
Roasted Brussels Sprouts and Apples on Pinterest
Lemon Pound Cake
Smashed Red Potatoes (I used Earth Balance for the butter, and almond milk for the milk)
Eggplant and Tempeh Pot Pies - "The Vegan Table" by Collen Patrick-Goudreau
Biscuits

Do you celebrate any spring holidays?  What are some of your favorite meals and traditions?  Leave me a comment and share yours!