Last week, I showed you guys how to hollow out and sterilize eggs. Follow those instructions before attempting to make the chocolate eggs below.
Today, I want to show you how to make a few different types of chocolate eggs, though the process is similar for each recipe. This project was inspired by some egg nog eggs I shared last Christmas. I decided to incorporate real eggshells after failing to find egg-shaped molds at the store and discovered this (insanely difficult) Martha Stewart tutorial.
Supplies
Empty eggshells
Vegetable oil
Microwave
A squirt bottle or pastry bag – Michael’s stores carry the bottles I used
Melt-able chocolate
Sprinkles, coffee, etc. for the various types of eggs you want to make
Egg carton for storage
Directions
Pour a drop of oil in to each of your dried eggshells. Shake the oil around or spread it around the shells’ insides. This will act like baking spray and help to avoid sticking later on.
Fill your pastry bag or squirt bottle with chocolate. The bottles I used are microwavable, so I put my room-temperature chocolate in them, added some oil and microwaved them. If you use pastry bags, you’ll need to melt your chocolate before filling the bag.
When your chocolate is melted, stir in any ingredients you wanted to add, like sprinkles. Through the larger opening of your shell, gently squirt your chocolate mixture into your egg. You might need to microwave the chocolate a little more if it starts too re-solidify.
A great shortcut I thought of after making a couple of these was to first fill your shells with solid chocolate pieces, and then use the liquid chocolate to fill in the gaps – it’s much faster!
Once filled, put your eggs in the fridge to solidify for a few hours.
To break open and eat your eggs, tap them with a spoon like a real hard boiled egg. The only eggs you’ll have to be careful for are those that aren’t solid.
Variations
Plain Milk Chocolate
The quality of the chocolate used here is essential. A solid chocolate egg is surprisingly huge – several tablespoons of chocolate per egg. All you’ll need for this recipe is a bag of milk chocolate chips.
Andes Mint and Other Branded Candy Bars
A lot of big candy bar companies sell bagged, crushed versions of their bars. I made some solid Andes Mint eggs, but as I wrote this, I started to dream about M&M, Heath, and Snickers eggs too! Yummy.
As a side note, it looks cool if you can get solid chunks of the Andes bits in the eggs. To get the bits of green mint to show the finished eggs, I added un-melted Andes chunks to the eggs right before refrigerating.
White Chocolate Sprinkle Shells
White chocolate chips with sprinkles stirred in are all you need for this one. Since I just used white baking chocolate, I wanted to make these hollow rather than solid. To do this, you just fill your shells all the way, let sit for five minutes, and pour out the eggs’ liquid centers. I had to poke at mine with a chop stick to get the chocolate to pour out. Remember to rotate your eggs as they solidify so you don’t end with particularly thin or thick spots on the eggs like I did (see pictures).
Mocha
Mocha eggs are my husband’s favorite. Finely ground coffee beans stirred in with semi-sweet chocolate chips made for a really, really delicious egg.
Other ideas
If anyone out there has other ideas, please leave a comment and share them! Not to sound cheesy, but I think the possibilities are relatively endless with these eggs. I have some dark chocolate, Kahlua, and raspberries I’m saving to experiment with this week!
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