Easter Eggs

I love Easter eggs. I always have. They're so pretty and colorful. But after about a quarter of a century, there needs to be a way to mix it up a bit. Do something different. So this year, I was inspired by some various blog posts (via FoodGawker.com) to try what would prove to be one of the most time consuming, but ultimately impressive, Easter eggs ever: cake eggs!

You heard me right. Cake eggs. Real egg shells filled with cake. You crack open an egg, and find cake inside. In this case, funfetti cake. The process took most of the morning, and they didn't turn out quite as perfect as hoped, but hey, it was my first try.

To start the process, I began with dying my eggs. I wanted vibrant colors, so I let them sit in the dye for about 20 minutes.

I used a basic hot water/dye/splash of vinegar solution. As the eggs must be raw at this point, I didn't use too hot of water. I have to admit, the resulting colors were pretty stunning:

Then came the first challenge: emptying the eggs. I've heard there are special tools that can be used to snip off the tip of an egg shell for such projects such as this, but that's one obscure kitchen gadget I have yet to pick up. So it was all by hand. Following various tips I found online, I used a corkscrew to make a small hole in the tip of the egg, then carefully used my fingers to expand the hole to roughly the size of a pastry tip base. I then emptied the eggs, using my milk-frothing thermometer to coerce it out as needed. Use the eggs for whatever you need, but be sure to keep track of the numbers you need for the cake and separate those out.

After emptying the eggs, you need to soak them in cold salt water for 30 minutes. Not entirely clear on why, but everything said this. I'm presuming as a way to clean it up a bit more, since it will be used to bake cake in. This is where my plan first began running awry, and I'm not sure if there's a way around it. As I soaked my beautifully colored egg shells, I realized that all the yellow dye simply washed away. The yellow eggs became white, the orange reverted to pink, and the green faded to blue. Damn. Still lovely, but not quite the rainbow of color I was looking for. Oh well, moving on. Once the shells are soaked, you need to let them drain fully upside down while you make your cake batter and prep your pan.

I decided that funfetti cake would further add to the colorful fun of Easter eggs, so I used the same recipe as my last post. Really, you can use any cake recipe you'd like. Just be sure to scale it down! (Something I forgot to do...ended up with two additional layers of cake, which, due to laziness of not lining the bottom with parchment paper, are now bound for my first experiment at cake pops/bites...but that's another post). Since recipes make different sizes and the number of eggs you're insane enough to make may vary, it's going to be kind of guesstimating. For some reference, I made 25 eggs, and I needed to cut my recipe (which normally makes a three layer cake) to 1/3.

To get the egg shells to stand up for baking, the best way is to use a muffin tin and foil. I took a couple layers of foil (took a square, folded it in quarters) and kind of created a nest to support the egg shells. Once I had all my eggs in their foil nests, it was time to fill them. To accomplish this, you need a pastry bag with a plain tip. Fill the eggs roughly 2/3 full with batter. This is again a matter of guesstimation, as cake recipes vary. You want your cake to fully fill the shell when baked, but not overflow. My cake recipe rises so much that I should have aimed more for 1/2 full. This is what happened with them being too full:

Oops. (But it did give me a great idea for when these can be used outside of Easter: use brown eggs and red velvet cake, and you have mini-volcanoes!). This mess isn't the end of the eggs though. You just need to scrape off the excess cake (a paring knife can help with this), but it's hard to remove all cake residue and if you have dyed eggs, the cake will also take the dye with it.

The final product:

Seriously, how cute is this?