Making Easter Eggs with Internet supervision – A Jemimah Knight adapted recipe
This is a relatively simple recipe that is likely to harden your arteries – but it also contains less in the way of preservatives and such, so maybe it’s not all bad.
*Make sure you wait until Easter day, these can be pre-prepared, but where’s the fun in that?
*Search web for suitable chocolate egg recipe and note that you’ll need to use your freezer. Note also that your freezer is full of ice so there will be some multitasking ahead.
*Clear frozen-over freezer of consumables and set water to boil in 4 pots. Place tea towel inside freezer door and add 2 pots of boiling water inside. Shut door and go out to fetch a few missing ingredients.
*Check this recipe on teh interwebs – realise it makes a bajillion eggs, and reduce quantities by half –
¼ cup of golden syrup
3 tablespoons of softened butter
¼ teaspoon of salt
1 ½ orange blossom flavouring
1 vanilla bean (skipped)
1 teaspoon of vanilla (adjusted to match the pod you skipped)
1 ½ cups of icing sugar
Yellow food colouring
6 oz of dark chocolate (Mixed dark with milk and bought way too much of both *shrug*)
*Collect measured out ingredients artfully on kitchen table and post image to various social networks.
*Mix butter, vanilla (skipped vanilla pods), orange blossom oil, and salt together with electric whisk.
*Put on Wonder Woman apron acknowledging that you have never been able to manage powdered sugar without wearing it.
*Mumble along to various and assorted protest songs from the late 60s and early 70s your parents played you as a cub. Shake a leg to the more upbeat tunes to keep your FitBit happy.
*Add powdered sugar bit by bit until smooth. Note with interest that flatmate is setting his roller-hockey sticks alight over the stove while making one longer. Learn that you need longer sticks when you have higher skates. TIL.
*Take one-third of the fondant out and place in a separate bowl. Add yellow food colouring until you are satisfied that you have something that will dye the teeth and tongues of all who taste your delicacies.
*Set aside and replace pots of hot water in the freezer. Catch falling ice blocks and chip some off with a strong blunt knife being careful not to destroy the inside of the freezer.
*Sweep ice chips off the floor and dump in the sink. Soak up the bits you missed with your socks. Shut new hot pots in the freezer and wash up mixer and other tools used to make fondant.
*Chip remaining ice from freezer and create ice floe diorama with finger nun you forgot you owned. Post to Instagram.
*Put food back in freezer, add fondant to chill for about half an episode of Dr Who on the iPlayer.
*Smother cold hands in cream to avoid drying out. Realise immediately that you will be handling the fondant and will have to wash it all off again momentarily.
*Discuss alternatives to cleaning ovens on Twitter. [View the story “The glamour of home life” on Storify]
*Make some tea.
*Remove yellow fondant and use a teaspoon to roll into small balls. Place them on baking paper on a tray that will fit in the freezer. Laugh at the term small balls because you have the same sense of humour as an 11-year-old. Return small yellow balls to the freezer.
*Sigh briefly at yellow dye all over your palms and hope that it won’t stick around.
*Rejoice that there’s another Bowie retrospective on Music 6 to sing along to. Remain appalled at ‘The Laughing Gnome’.
*Chop chocolate into chips and place in a heat-resistant bowl. Put water into a saucepan that the bowl will fit into without getting water inside the bowl. Water is the enemy of chocolate.
*Remove frozen small yellow balls and white fondant from the freezer. Working quickly with cold hands so things don’t get too sticky, wrap a tablespoon’s worth of white fondant around each yellow ball.
*Place back on the tray and work until all the small yellow balls are covered.
*Return to freezer for another half a Dr Who.
*Prepare an old Amazon box by punching cocktail sticks into it – the same amount as you have eggs in the freezer.
*Nip to the bathroom – remove apron first and always wash your hands. Note with a frown that you have icing sugar on your face and fondant in your hair. Decide to deal with this later.
*Don apron again and grin insanely at flatmate who appears to be somewhat bemused by spike-covered delivery box. Explain nothing.
*Become briefly annoyed at benefits cuts reported on the radio news.
*Write up notes on recipe activities.
*Check on melting chocolate and stir with a knife. Try not to set oven mitt on fire again while holding the bowl in place.
*Once melted, turn off the heat and take the eggs from the freezer. Arrange the box of spikes nearby and remove all the cocktail sticks.
*Push a cocktail stick into the base of an egg so that it feels firmly in place when you tip it upside down. Hopefully this way, fewer eggs will fall into the chocolate preventing burns and swearing to extract them.
*Use the stick to dip the egg into the chocolate, cover as much as you can in one quick turn so you don’t melt the fondant. Cover the rest using a teaspoon (best to have a plate nearby to rest the chocolate-covered spoon on).
*Slowly turn the egg so the chocolate sets. When it has mostly stopped moving, push the end of the cocktail stick into the box and let the egg set.
*Repeat until all the eggs are covered. Singing along to Space Odyssey optional but highly recommended.
*Marvel at your work while wiping chocolate across your spectacles and then add a thin coating to your phone while you take a photo to blog.
*Leave the eggs to set on the box like a weird misshapen forest of blobs.
*Consider the leftover chocolate, search the web and decide to make something out of it by setting the rest on baking paper to make a thin slab.
*Stare at slab wondering what to do next, shrug and put it in the freezer to think about later.
*Line a plastic box with baking paper, check the eggs have set.
*Take the cocktail sticks out of the eggs and place them in the box with some space around them.
*Find that ripping the sticks out chips the chocolate and drags out half the insides of the first one. Do some light cursing and carefully twist the others out to avoid more damage.
*Add another layer of paper and so on until all the eggs are in the box. Briefly think about putting all eggs in one basket and take extra care putting the box in the fridge.
*Clean pots and sing along to more Bowie songs on the radio.
*Make some coffee and think about what to do with spare chocolate.
*Remove eggs from fridge and arrange on a plate to take seductive food pr0n images.
*Feed an egg to willing flatmate and watch closely for reaction. Observe nomming, assorted moaning and groaning noises, register that the product has been described as ‘Outrageous’.
*If flatmate does not collapse, try half yourself. They’re pretty good and exceedingly rich.
*Return eggs to fridge for later and get blog notes together.
*Put hand cream on again and ignore spare slab of chocolate in the freezer until a good idea arrives.
Enjoy!
~JK
One Response to “Making Easter Eggs with Internet supervision – A Jemimah Knight adapted recipe”
It looks good to me
Jo