Chocolate Easter Eggs that you buy in the store have questionable chocolate quality. I’m a chocolate fiend, I could have Chocolate At Every Meal, and just as I always assure the source of ALL my food, the same is true for Easter chocolate. I don’t want sweetened vegetable oil, I want good quality chocolate!
Let’s be honest, after you dye two-dozen hard boiled eggs and stink up your kitchen with vinegar and egg perfume, what do you do with those eggs? Can you eat THAT much egg salad within two days? I’m not a fan of egg salad, but I DO love chocolate and chocolate eggs have a much longer shelf life. They are a lot more fun to make as well!
The reason many people avoid making their own chocolate Easter eggs may be because they’ve tried in the past and became frustrated at chocolate that would melt, but never return to a hard candy coating. That’s because the key to making chocolate Easter eggs is not melting chocolate, but tempering chocolate.
Tempering is a process where you melt chocolate to a precise 100F, and then add room-temperature chocolate to it. This aligns the crystalline structure and allows it to return to a crunchy state. This is the same method I used when I showed you how to “Make Your Own Chocolates For Valentines Day.”
After the chocolate is correctly tempered, then your creativity can take over and use any shape as a mold. To create chocolate Easter eggs, I use a plastic one and apply chocolate to the inside with a pastry brush. I’ve also used small tart pans, muffin cups, and paper muffin tin liners.
I can’t decide whether to make a cream egg or a peanut butter and chocolate Easter egg, but I can make both. Peanut butter can be sweetened with powdered sugar to make a great filling. Or, powdered sugar, water, and vanilla will make my simple cream filling.
This is where the fun and the mess arrives, because filling the chocolate eggs must be done quickly. The more you handle the chocolate, the more quickly it will melt from the heat in your hands. Fill them quickly, apply more tempered chocolate to the edges as a “glue”, and seal the egg with another molded half.
Making your own chocolate Easter eggs is fun but takes some kitchen technique to complete successfully. Chocolate is better than dyed eggs, and creating your own holiday treats gives you pride in your accomplishment.
Do you think this is too much work for the reward?
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