Homemade chocolate easter eggs

How great is it to make a homemade Easter egg? And they're so easy! Okay, you might get yourself and the kitchen covered in chocolate, but as Shep said today on their Shep and Jo show (if you haven't heard the Shep and Jo show on BBC Radio Devon, where have you been...!?), when they very kindly allowed me on again this afternoon, you are just going to have to lick it all off!

Right, eyes down for homemade Easter eggs...

This is how to make an Easter egg using the shell of a real egg as the mold.

So, first you need an egg. You can get eggs in all different colours:

Green
Blue
Pink
White
Dark brown

And different sizes:

Quail
Goose
Chicken
Bantam

Now, empty the egg, and you do this by taking a needle and digging away the the pointy end of the egg until you have a hole about the diameter of a pencil. When you have done that, take a cocktail stick (or anything similar) and dig about inside the egg, kind of mulching the contents so when you tip the egg up, the insides fall out - you can of course tease it out with the cocktail stick.

So now you have an empty shell.

Now run it under a hot tap so it fills with water, and empty it out. Do this several times until the water runs clear.

Now you need to sterilise the egg shell, so pop it into a pre heated oven at 180 for at least 10 mins.

That's your mold!

Now you have choices (choices are good!) for the fillings.

Option one:

Simple, melt a bar of chocolate and pipe it into the egg shell using either a piping bag or something like a sandwich bag with the corner cut. When the egg shell is full, place it in the fridge to chill overnight. When it comes out it will, fairly obviously, be a hard, solid chocolate egg. if you very carefully peel away the shell, you can decorate the egg or leave it plain.

Option two:

This is for a soft chocolate fill, truffle chocolate (also known as a ganache). Truffle chocolate is easy to make, this is how:

Ingredients:
275g/10oz chocolate
175mls/6floz double cream
25g/1oz butter

Method:
Melt the chocolate, add the double cream and butter and stir until thoroughly mixed. That's it!

Fill the egg with the same method as option one, and chill in the fridge.

Decorating the shell or not is up to you, but serve in an egg cup at room temperature and eat as you might a boiled egg by chopping off the top and dipping in with a spoon, of course watching for any egg shell especially for children.

Happy Easter everyone!