Review: Lakeland Easter kits

If you’re looking for a fun Easter cooking project in the kitchen over the holidays, I’ve got a cracker for you.

Those fine people at Lakeland sent me a box of Easter themed chocolate moulds and kit so Sam and I took advantage of the teachers’ strike, rolled up our sleeves and got stuck in.

It really is a simple but engaging task. It held Sam’s attention far longer than any other cookery we’ve done together. He was able to do most of it for himself after I’d demonstrated what to do. I think they get more out of it if they feel like they have ownership over it.

The hardest bit is stopping them from licking their fingers while they’re doing it, but it’s a good lesson in food hygiene for them.

The chocolate melting pot (£2.99) is a great bit of kit – small but fits a suprising amount of chocolate in. It’s perfect for using with kids because of it’s size and simplicity. Sam loved breaking up the chocolate to put in, learning how to operate the microwave, checking to see if the chocolate was melting, and working out how long to put it in for.

We found doing an initial burst of one minute, then an extra 20 second blast did the trick! It was cool enough for Sam to handle once it came out of the microwave, but did get hotter each time we used it, so do bear this in mind.

The first set of moulds we tried were the miniature eggs. I’ve never seen Sam concentrate on one task so carefully – it was a revelation.

The bunny lolly moulds (£3.49) are really fun, but I did need to prop up the sticks to stop them from flopping out. We also used some silicone moulds of different animal shapes – I think the silicone are the easiest to turn out, but the smaller shapes work better than the larger ones as they don’t take as much chocolate to fill.

As you can see in this picture I used Sainsbury’s Belgian White and Milk Chocolates for the task. I’d not tried these products before, previously using Green & Black’s Cook’s Chocolate, but I have to say I was very impressed with the quality, texture and flavour.

Sam would definitely agree on the taste front – as you can see here he was pretty delighted to be able to test it out after we’d finished all the melting and pouring.

We put all the moulds in the fridge to set as the weather has been so warm this week. Once turned out onto a wooden board we were thrilled to bits with the results. Crisp outlines and a glossy finish makes them look really rather good for our first efforts.

To package the chocolate up I bought some  gift bags from Sainsbury’s which come with lovely silver ribbon. As well as gifts for friends, Arlo has his Easter Bonnet parade this week and we all have to take goodies for the coffee morning. I thought a little bag of home-made choccies would work well.

So all in all an inexpensive and simple way to get children in the kitchen over the holidays with a great product at the end. Result!

Thanks to Lakeland for sending me a selection of their Easter chocolate-making range