Anti-stress planning for Easter brunch

Eat and drink for hours and enjoy the start of spring. Easter brunch is a holiday favourite. Do you want to organise it at home, pull out all the stops and still stay relaxed? Follow these golden rules of Easter brunch planning:

Start early

The earlier the guest list, menu and daily schedule are finalised, the better you can work through your to-do lists.

Buffet style is the best

Homemade, ready-made and baked goods all have a place on the Easter brunch buffet. Ask everyone to contribute something. A cake here, a quiche there or a salad and you'll soon have a table groaning with food.

Ask for help

Having a friend who can come a little earlier on the day to help with the final preparations makes a real difference and reduces that last-minute stress!

The Easter brunch buffet

At brunch, you can put together breakfast classics and lunch treats, savoury and sweet, cold and hot dishes to suit your taste. Simply look for recipes that you can prepare quickly and with just a few ingredients. The best tool for this? An air fryer! This nifty bit of kit helps you prepare bread, rolls, muffins or hearty finger food in record time. You can even cook eggs or meat in it without any effort. Many recipes written for the oven can be easily adapted to the air fryer. To do this, reduce the specified temperature by 10 to 20 degrees and shorten the baking time by just over ten per cent. Also, always season the oil so that the spices don't "fly away" during air frying.

Why not also get your guests involved in the preparations. Inviting them to decorate their own cupcakes is a great way to get everyone together and boosts the party spirit, particularly for young children.

A DIY bagel station is another time saver. Serve lots of tasty fillings and get your guests to fill their bagels with whatever takes their fancy – easy peasy!

Quick, eye-catching decorations

A decorated spring table is a must for Easter brunch. But the decorations don't have to be elaborate. With the latest styling trends and decorating hacks, your Easter brunch table will be a real eye-catcher.

Tea towels in trendy colours and designs add colour to an Easter table. Clean and ironed, they are a trendy alternative to napkins. Foraging outdoors and adding your finds to the table is another great touch: meadow flowers, blossoming twigs or daffodils will give your table a fresh, spring look that your guests will love. Adding pastel colours to the table is another great way to set the Easter mood. All you need is a tablecloth in a pastel colour, spring flowers such as tulips or daffodils and cute Easter bunny figurines. No time for the florist? Artificial tulip bouquets with a real-touch effect are practically indistinguishable from the real flower. Origami, the art of paper folding, is a very popular decoration. Origami bunnies, birds and eggs will look great on the table and they're easy to make.

A few last-minute flourishes like Easter egg pendants on pretty branches from the garden or painted eggs in an Easter basket and you're done, Happy Easter!