The 'Ultimate' Easter Lunch

For the last couple of years we have had a mini friends get together to celebrate Christmas, this has become known as 'The Ultimate Christmas' and we thought we would continue this through to Easter too, just with a few changes. The obvious one - it is Easter not Christmas. No tree and secret santa but Easter egg hunts and bunting. Chicken not turkey (even though we have never had turkey, choosing beef or pork at the friends get together). And the big one, its our tiny flat instead of one of our friends, meaning we were in charge of the main course - gulp! Plus it was the most people we had cooked for since moving in.

The day began with a little easter egg hunt, which quickly descended into a mad rush (and very competitive) race to claim the most! Our friend Lou won by quiet a few.

We decided to try and keep it simple by making sure everything was prepared before people arrived so we were minimising the panic in the kitchen, but we still wanted to make as much from scratch as possible.

We got a large enough chicken to feed six people and went for a Jamie Oliver recipe stuffed with a whole lemon, it also cooked the rosemary potatoes in the oven dish with the chicken, which is a great solution when you have a small oven. My favourite tip was crumbling the crispy bacon that had been keeping the chicken crown juicy over the potatoes when cooked.

I was in charge of the cauliflower cheese, using a recipe from BBC Good Food and Mat was in charge of the homemade bread sauce which was lovely considering he managed to leave in the whole peppercorns and forgot to add the cream, if you would like to try the actual recipe it was by Delia and can be found here. Mat also made the stuffing

We boiled the broccoli and roasted the carrots and parsnips in honey and sea salt. We also cheated with the yorkshires but this was because we had nowhere free to put a whole tray of homemade ones, so we just slotted Aunt Bessie's wherever we could find space.

It all went down really well, you always get a good feeling when you feed people you like and they enjoy it. This was followed by Hayley's amazing individual jam jar banoffee pies, all wrapped up in little ribbons - such a cute (and tasty) way to serve dessert.

The day was rounded off with a game of Cranium, which the boys won for the first time, taking the tally to 3-1 to the girls - but it was very close. Mat spilled his ale, twice (a common occurrence after all day drinking), we tucked into a cheese board supplied by Lou and Ollie and then everyone headed home in a drunken haze.