Holidays can be tricky living abroad. Many times, you find yourselves trying to celebrate by hanging on to family traditions from back home with no extended family around to celebrate with. And then sometimes, you throw the book of old family traditions out the window in favor of creating some new customs that may very well turn into traditions of their own eventually. Sometimes the latter tactic is preferred when it’s easier than acknowledging the fact that you won’t be able to celebrate in the same fashion you have grown accustomed to for most of your life. Plus, it can be a blast finding a way to incorporate your new culture into those age-old family traditions. 😊
For Easter this year, we have chosen to keep the Easter baskets and big-as-a-football foil-wrapped eggs tucked away in their cozy closets. Instead of the usual Easter Bunny hubbub, we are opting to use those vacation days for a mini-trip abroad. We will be taking an overnight train to Bergen, Norway, one of the most underrated cities in Europe...most likely because of the fact that it rains on 75% of days there. (Hey, it couldn’t be any worse than winter in Stockholm, right?) We are beyond excited. Fjords, a cog railway, sleeper cars, mountains, and a few more degrees Celsius. 😎🚂🗻
But before we go, we had to do a little something to acknowledge the fact that spring is on its way. With that in mind...and with the knowledge that I don’t much like baking anything that requires more than 4 or 5 ingredients, we opted to make Easter egg kokosbollar with pastel-hued coconut flakes. Super easy to make with a little help from my mini-chefs and de-lish. Don’t even bother pre-heating your ovens because these babies are no-bake. Yessssss.
150g (2/3 cup) butter (we used lactose-free for my son)
1tsk vaniljsocker (subsitute 1tsp vanilla extract)
2tbsp/msk water or cold coffee
4dl (1 2/3 cups) oats (havregryn)
coconut flakes or sprinkles
Before we started on the chocolate balls, we split our coconut into two quart-size plastic bags and added a few drops of food coloring to each, letting all excess air out of the bags before zipping closed. We mashed the food coloring and coconut flakes to blend the color and then poured the flakes into two bowls.
Then, in a large mixing bowl, my son mixed together the butter (room temperature) and sugar.
While he mixed, we took the opportunity to chat a bit about how to measure and count the correct amounts of cocoa powder, vaniljsocker, water (because we all know the last thing 4-year-old boys need is coffee), and oats.
Once measured, we mixed in the cocoa, vaniljsocker, water, and oats. We stirred thoroughly until the oats were completely covered in chocolate.
We used a cookie scoop (although a spoon would work just as well) and rolled egg-shaped bollar in our palms. Once the shape was right, we gently rolled the eggs into our colored coconut.
Before we could eat all of them, we popped them into the fridge to chill.
Hope you enjoy your Easter as much as we plan to!
P.S. Anyone noticing the similarity between the snow outside and our yummy coconut flakes? If only the snow tasted as tropical. 😉