No one seems to be selling fair trade Easter eggs in New Zealand this year, so last week my friend Anna and I again got together to make our own. We use fair trade chocolate: this way we can be confident our Easter treats are a blessing not only to those who receive them but also to all those involved in their production :-)
Over the years we’ve developed a number of home-made Easter egg recipes. We first learned how to make marshmallow chocolate Easter eggs. Last year we added creme eggs to our repertoire: both classic creme eggs and vegan peppermint chocolate ones. This year we made hazelnut chocolate Easter eggs: a milk chocolate shell filled with a paste that tastes a lot like the filling in Guylian seashell chocolates.
This recipe makes about 30 eggs using moulds with cavities about 3cm across, 4cm long and 1cm deep (look for hard plastic moulds - silicone doesn’t work well with filled eggs). It’s way less fiddly than the creme eggs we have previously made in the same moulds!
Preparing the filling:
Assembling the Easter eggs (see below for photos of the process):
I decided to melt the chocolate in my fancy chocolate machine so it wouldn’t burn. As you can see, that didn’t work out as hoped. However, using chocolate that was as lumpy as this turned out to work fine.
Hazelnut butter mixed in. You can see it’s got quite a few lumps from the chocolate.
Icing sugar mixed in. You can see it’s now stiff-ish (and not much above room temperature).
The recipe made about a cup of filling. I stored it in the fridge until I was ready to make the eggs. I expect it will store more-or-less indefinitely at fridge temperature.
Pouring the chocolate into the moulds for the first coat. I’m using these moulds.
Piping the second coat of chocolate around the rim of the egg shells (so that they are evenly thick all around)
Piping chocolate around the rim of the eggs after they’ve been filled with hazelnut filling. Some of these have already been ‘capped’ with a second half-egg.
Ready for final setting in the freezer.
The finished product!