#sizzlinwithSAS: The Knock Off Secord Egg Edition

I love sugar.  And chocolate.  And Easter.

As soon as the Easter candy starts coming out in stores, I get excited.  Especially for Secord eggs and Cadbury Easter Cream Eggs. This year, for reasons I'm still not sure of, I attempted to make a version of these eggs from scratch.  I watched YouTube videos, read articles, etc. but nothing prepared me for how difficult they were going to be.  Luckily, I gave myself lots of time including a full day to make 3 batches plus the following morning to decorate them.  In the end, I kind of made up my own recipe -- if you're game for the challenge, here it is!

Ingredients:

Cream egg filling:

• 2/3 can sweetened condensed milk like Eagle Brand
• ½ cup of butter softened
• 1 ½ teaspoons pure vanilla
• 4 cups icing sugar
• 10 drops yellow food colouring

Chocolate outside:

• ¼ cup butter
• 16 oz chocolate, divided.
• 6 oz white chocolate, divided with food colouring drops

Procedure:

With a hand mixer on high, whip together the sweetened condensed milk, butter, and vanilla until light and fluffy.  Slowly incorporate ½ of the sugar staring with the mixer on slow and increasing the speed when possible … so you do not make a cloud of icing sugar.  Fold in by hand the remaining ½ sugar until you can use your mixer.  Slowing mix until fully incorporated.  Your mixer may be struggling.  Careful!

Remove 1/3 of the filling and add 10 drops of yellow colouring to it.  Fully incorporate into the mixture until evenly yellow.  Divide into 4 and handroll each portion into a log.   Place on an icing sugar dusted pan or parchment.

With the remaining 2/3 of the icing filling, dust the countertop with icing sugar.  Roll out icing with an icing sugar dusted rolling pin to a ~12’ x ~12’ sheet.  Cut into 4 portions with a sharp knife or a pizza cutter.  With icing sugar dusted hands, form each portion around a yellow log from above.  Chill for 2 hours in the fridge or 30 minutes in the freezer.

In a double boiler, melt butter.  Melt 8 oz chocolate in butter while whisking.  Keep the mixture to “just melted” (do not allow to get to warm or runny).  Completely dip each egg individually into the melted chocolate.  Allow to set on parchment in the fridge for 30 minutes.

In a double boiler, melt remaining chocolate a little warmer than the previous batch so it is slightly runnier.  Slowly and carefully, pour over eggs for a smooth topcoat.  Allow to set in the fridge for at least 30 minutes (or overnight!  Especially because now, you are exhausted and are cursing yourself, or me, for making these!)

Break white chocolate up into 3 x 2oz batches.  Work in individual colour batches … carefully and slowly, melt 2oz in the microwave blending in the food colouring drops to get the colours that you would like to decorate with.  I did:

Pink (barely 1/2 a drop of red food colouring in 2 oz white chocolate);
Light blue (barely 1/2 a drop of blue food colouring in 2 oz white chocolate); and
Teal green (1 drop of blue and 1 drop of red food colouring in 2 oz white chocolate)

I transferred the coloured chocolate into snack sized zip lock bags into just one corner, squished all the chocolate into that corner and cut the tiniest little hole in the tip in bag then pipe it into your desired design on top of the eggs … dots, swirls, lines, scalloped edges, etc.  Repeat for each colour.

When decorating is complete, chill in the fridge for 30 minutes before packaging to give to your friends.

If you are going to this amount of work, make 3 batches (hence, 2 full cans of sweetened condensed milk) then you will have 12 eggs – lots for gifting.

To serve, bring to room temperature.  Slice across the egg in 1” slices.  Serve on a small plate.  Beware of extreme hyper-ness or sugar toxicity after enjoyment … LOL!

Enjoy with a demi-sec or sec sparkling wine like Luminescence (sparkling Riesling with Icewine dosage)

When I can figure out a way to make them runnier without using a chocolate mold for the outer egg (hence working from the outside in rather than the inside out), then I will let you know!