Read About April's Featured Swan Princess Fan Here
Find this Month's Coloring Sheet and Trivia Question Here
Happy Easter!
What a strange few weeks it has been for Kingdoms across the world, but Easter will soon be here and we have plenty of ways to brighten up this strange time!
Enjoy The Swan Princess movies on DVD and/or digital with the whole family and sing along to all of your favorite songs from the series - why not Skype your friends and watch the movies together, without even leaving your own home?
Find the Swan Princess series on hulu, Amazon and Sky!
Fruit and Veggie Snacks
With all of the shortages in the stores, we've noticed there is consistently an abundance of fresh fruit and vegetables! We've asked the kitchen staff to spend some of their extra time indoors chopping up more fresh snacks. One of Puffin's favorite snacks is fresh sliced cucumbers.
We are so excited that strawberries are in season because we know the easiest tasty fruit dip! Just whip together equal parts of cream cheese and marshmallow creme. It's really yummy just like that! Or you can add juice from maraschino cherries to make it a pretty pink or add some jello crystals for extra flavor (you chose what kind but we've tried both lime and peach, tasty!)
Easter Egg Hunt!
All you need for this activity is some paper/card, any coloring and decorating materials/crayons you can find, and your imagination!
Making The Easter Eggs- Brighten up your home with some Easter decorations! Use our egg templates below:
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Cut out your egg shape
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Decorate and color your egg with glitter, buttons, stickers, ribbons, gems...whatever you can find!
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Stick your decorated eggs around your home and even in your window.
Why not get in touch with your neighbors and ask them to put an egg in their window too? Then you can have an Easter egg hunt from your window or if you are able to go out, make it a part of your daily walk and see how many eggs you can see!
Limited Edition Pins!
The first of our limited edition pins are well and truly underway and sales of this collector's item are expected to commence very soon, so be sure to subscribe to our social media so you can own your very own Swan Princess pin.
Easter Biscuits (Cookies)
Ingredients:
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2 cups (300g) plain flour, plus extra for dusting
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3/4 cups (150g) sugar
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2/3 cups (150g) salted butter, chopped
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1 large egg
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2 tsp vanilla extract/vanilla bean paste
For the iced option:
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2 1/2 cups (500g) royal icing sugar
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Food coloring gels in your favorite colors!
For the jammy middle option:
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Icing sugar, for dusting
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1 1/4 cups (400g) fruit jam, lemon curd or any other delicious filling you can think of!
Instructions:
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Put the flour and sugar in a bowl and add the butter before rubbing together with your fingertips until the mixture resembles wet sand, with no buttery lumps.
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Beat the egg and vanilla together and add this to the mixture.
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Mix briefly with a cutlery knife, then use your hands to knead the dough together – try not to overwork the dough, or the biscuits will be tough.
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Shape into a disc, then wrap in cling film and chill for at least 15 mins. Heat oven to 350 F. Line two baking sheets with baking parchment.
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Dust a work surface with flour and halve the dough.
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Roll one half out to the thickness of a quarter. Use an egg-shaped cookie cutter (you could also make a cling film covered template to cut around) to stamp out the cookies. Use any leftover dough to make a ball and roll it flat again to get as many cookies as you can!
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Place them on one of the baking sheets, leaving a little space between the biscuits.
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Repeat the process with the other half of the dough.
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Bake for 12-15 mins, until the biscuits are pale gold.
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Cool on the sheets for 10 mins, then transfer to a wire rack to cool fully. Once cool, decorate your cookies in any way you want to!
Tasty Tip - Princess Odette enjoys adding icing to these delicious biscuits when she bakes with Alise and sometimes they use jam or curd as a filling.
After step 8, use the methods below to make iced or jammy biscuits...or even both!
Preparing the Biscuits:
If you want to make jammy biscuits, use a small circular cutter to stamp holes in half of the biscuits (where the yolk would be). If you would like to make both iced and jammy biscuits, only stamp holes in a quarter of the biscuits.
Icing Biscuits
1. To decorate the biscuits with icing, add enough water to the icing sugar to make a thick icing – it should hold its shape without spreading when piped.
2. Transfer about a third of the icing to a piping bag fitted with a very small round nozzle (or just snip a tiny opening at the tip). Pipe an outline around the biscuits, then draw patterns in the middle – lines, spots, and zigzags work well. Leave to dry for 10 mins.
3. Divide the remaining icing between as many colors as you’d like to use, then use the gels to dye them.
4. Loosen each icing with a few drops of water, then transfer them to piping bags. Use the colored icing to fill the empty spaces on the biscuits. You may need to use a cocktail stick to tease it into the corners.
5. Once covered, leave to dry for a few hours.
Jammy Biscuits
1. Dust the biscuits with holes in the middle with a heavy coating of icing sugar.
2. Spread the jam or curd generously over the whole biscuits, then sandwich the dusted biscuits on top of them.
Plus Size Costumes!
The royal dressmaker has been busy working on plus size costumes of Odette's beautiful dress and we can now say that these are on sale now - click here to buy yours today!
