Now, I saw this idea on Cupcake Project whilst perusing the Internet for food blogs to follow and I just HAD to try it. I mean, c’mon! Cake baked inside an egg?! It’s the perfect amount of weird and wonderful that it just had to be done! Also, cake is involved.
Obviously, being me, I had to get arty (and somewhat sciencey?!) with them.
Normally white eggs are quite difficult to find in the UK, but some supermarkets start stocking them around Easter time. I managed to hunt mine down in my local convenience store. Londis ftw. I was a little surprised with how easily the cake baked in the egg shells. Not to mention how easy it was to peel away the shell from the chocolate cake egg/scoff my face!
Definitely a cute little Easter bake, and they make adorable gifts! Just in time for the Easter weekend ;).
Ingredients
For the coloured egg shells:
10 white eggs
various food colouring (I used powdered food dye as I found it worked best!)
1tbsp of vinegar for every dye you use
1 cup of hot water for every dye you use
For the chocolate cake batter:
120g unsalted butter, room temperature
120g caster sugar
2 eggs (taken from 2 empty egg shells)
1tsp vanilla extract
60g dark chocolate
60ml milk
100g plain flour
20g cocoa powder
1tsp baking powder
Method
Preparing the coloured egg shells:
Carefully poke a small hole into the base of each egg (I used a corkscrew!).
Widen the hole slightly by peeling back the shell with your fingers.
Turn out the contents of each egg into a bowl, keeping 2 for the cake batter. I used the end of a fork to break up the yolk to make it easier to empty out. For the rest of the eggs you could make a family size helping of Spaghetti Carbonara, or a Spanish Omelette, or do what I would do and make a massive batch of French Toast! ;).
Wash out each egg with cold water, then place all the shells in a large bowl of warm salty water for 30 minutes, making sure the salty water gets inside the eggs. The salt helps to bind to any bits of egg that may be left inside and makes it easier to wash out.
After 30 minutes, throughly rinse out each egg once again. Take a cup and fill it with boiling water, add the vinegar and a generous sprinkling of the powdered food dye depending on how intense you want the colour. Once you’re happy, add the eggs shells to the dyed water. The acidic vinegar slowly dissolves the surface of the egg shell (which is made up of calcium carbonate), so should help the dye penetrate the surface of the egg shells quicker. Science yo!
After a minute or so, check the colour of the eggs. If you want a deeper colour, rinse and dunk them back in again. If you’re happy remove the eggs, rinse in cold water for a final time and leave to dry in an egg box with the hole facing downwards.
For the chocolate cake batter/egg construction:
Preheat oven to 170ºC.
Cream together the butter and sugar until pale and fluffy.
Beat in the eggs and vanilla extract.
Break the chocolate into a small bowl then add the milk. Microwave for 30 second intervals, stirring in between until the chocolate is completely melted. Leave to cool slightly.
Mix in the flour, cocoa powder, and baking powder into the egg/butter mixture.
Then add the melted chocolate. Mix until fully incorporated.
Place your mixture into a piping bag. Use a medium round tip, or simply cut of the end of the piping bag to size.
If the hole in the eggs shell is too small, gently peel back some more to widen the hole. Pipe in the mixture so it fills the egg to about 3/4 full. The cake may rise and overflow, but that’s much easier to fix than having not enough batter and a collection of half filled eggs! I only made 10 eggs, so with the mixture I had left over I made about 6 extra cupcakes, but the mixture should make approximately 15-18 eggs should you wish to make more.
Place the eggs in a cupcake tin, surrounding them with aluminium foil to keep the eggs upright. Cover the tray with foil and bake for approximately 25 minutes. At about 15 minutes in I took them out to break off the cake batter that was overflowing before they baked completely, and put them back in for the remaining 10 minutes. Once baked, leave to cool, then serve. With cute little chicks. There must be cute little chicks.
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