Colorful Easter Egg Cakes

I LOVE spring!  I would be happy if it were spring all year long.  I get to celebrate my birthday on the first day of spring.  The weather is FINALLY starting to warm up (I absolutely despise being cold!), daffodils are popping up everywhere, trees are budding, and pastels are back!  Then, of course, there’s  Easter, which means I get to gorge myself on ham and funeral potatoes (not to mention my mother-in-law’s AMAZING crescent rolls, which I eat way too many of).  But my most favorite thing about spring….Cadbury Mini Eggs!  Not the ones with yucky fondant in the middle—sorry if you like those.  The glorious creation that is chocolate coated in the absolute best candy shell ever.   I discovered these things in college—not sure what took me so long—and have loved them ever since.  A few years back I discovered them in dark chocolate.  Not gonna lie…I think I ate an entire bag by myself in one sitting that day.  Why they only sell these wonderful treats at Easter, I do not know.  But if you haven’t tried them…Go buy a bag!  Right now!! (No they’re not paying me to say that… they’re just that good!)

Anyway…enough of that tangent…

Another love of mine…CUPCAKES!  I have always loved these yummy little treats.  I had them at my wedding almost eight years ago before they were so popular now.  I think they are a perfect little dessert, especially because you can get so creative with them.  Which is why, when I came across this, I knew I had to try them!  I mean, come on…cupcakes baked in Easter Eggs!  How AWESOME is that?!

And the results….SO COOL!

Here’s what you’ll need for this project:

• 9 Jumbo eggs
• Your favorite cake recipe—I used my almond cake (see below).
• Water, vinegar, and food coloring to dye your eggs.

To prep your eggshells, first you’ll need to empty them.  This was actually much easier than I expected it to be.  I just took a sharp paring knife, poked a tiny hole in the top and then peeled it back a little with the edge of the knife.  I was seriously taken back to grade school, when we had an incubator in our classroom and got to watch little baby chickies hatch out of their shells!

Be sure to make the holes large enough to fit a piping tip inside, but not too large.  Err on the side of caution and make them small.  You can always make them bigger.  Oh, and I found that if you make the hole in the flatter end of the egg—really the part that I see as the bottom—they turn out much better!

Once you’ve created your hole, just shake the egg out into a bowl.  The white comes out first, so make sure to save two of those for the cake.   Just keep shaking gently until no more white comes out and then shake the yolk out into a different bowl.

After all of your eggs are empty, rinse them out with warm water and then let them soak for 30 minutes in a bowl of warm salt water.  I just put a healthy dose of salt in there to make sure those puppies came out clean.

After 30 minutes, rinse them again with cold water and set them on a rack to dry.  Do be careful when handling them now.  They crack fairly easily with nothing inside of them.

While they dry, prepare your egg-dying stations.  To do this, just put ½ cup water, 1 TBSP of vinegar, and 5-10 drops of food coloring into some cups.  Place your dry egg shells inside and let them soak until your desired color is reached.  I then allowed mine to dry on the drying rack over some paper towels.

You’ll want to make sure to give your shells plenty of time to dry, both inside and out.  Otherwise, you run the risk of dying your cake as well.  I took the time to prep my pan and make up my batter while I waited.

To prep your pan, you’ll need to cut some foil squares to create stabilizers for your eggs within the cupcake pan.  Just take the square of foil and make a little cup inside the cups of your pan.

Hopefully this picture helps explain it better than my words.  You just need to help your eggs to be able to stand up straight.  Once your eggshells are dry, you’ll place them in the little wells you’ve created so you can fill them with your cake batter.

To fill these little gems, I just used my almond cake recipe.  I only used ¼ of the recipe so I listed those measurements.  The full recipe makes 24 cupcakes.

Almond Cake

• ¼ milk, room temperature
• 2 egg whites (use the ones you kept aside from shaking out your eggs)
• ¼ tsp vanilla
• ¼ tsp almond emulsion (you can use extract if that’s all you have, but the flavor won’t be quite as strong)
• ½ cup + 1 TBSP cake flour
• ¼ cup + 3 TBSP sugar
• 1 tsp baking powder
• ¼ tsp salt
• 3 TBSP butter, softened

1. Combine milk, egg whites, vanilla and almond into a small bowl.   Set aside.
2. Combine flour, sugar, baking powder and salt using an electric mixer at low speed.
3. Add butter and continue beating on low until ingredients come together.  The mixture will kind of look like wet sand at this point.
4. Add all but 2 TBSP of the milk and egg mixture and increase speed to medium for 1 ½ minutes.  Add remaining milk mixture and beat for another 20-30 seconds, just until everything combines.   Be sure not to overmix.
5. Scoop your mix into a pastry bag and proceed to fill your eggshells.

Fill them about 2/3 -3/4 of the way full.  Once filled, give them a gently shake to release some of the air bubbles.  This way, your egg cakes will become less of a volcano in the oven.  They will probably still overflow a bit, but you can always pick off the overflow when they’re finished.  Otherwise, if you underfill them, you won’t have a full egg cake.  Bake in a 350F oven for about 15 minutes.  My oven cooks pretty fast, so just use a toothpick to check for doneness.

When they’re fully cooked, remove them from the oven and let them cool just long enough so you can stand to take them out of the pan and move them to a cooling rack.  Once they are fully cooled, you can place them in an Easter basket and watch your friends and family ooh and aah over your amazing little creations.

My favorite reaction came from my five-year-old son.  He was staying the night at his Nana’s when I made these so he didn’t see them until the next day.  He was so excited to see Easter eggs!  I told them these were special eggs…Cupcake eggs!  When I started cracking it on the counter, I don’t think his eyes could have gotten any bigger.  “They crack, Mom?!  Like REAL eggs?!”

While these little goodies may not have the yummy frosting (my personal favorite part of a cupcake), they definitely have the “Wow” factor!

Now, hop to!  Stop reading and start baking!

Happy Easter!