The Virgin Easter Egg Maker - It's All About the Chocolate
I thought my first attempt at making my own Easter eggs was a success, they looked brilliant, almost professional, but with of course a few things, like the joins of the two halves of the eggs that I'd like to improve. What I found though, was the melting process of the chocolate that I had used had broken down a structure within the chocolate, so when it came to leaving the chocolate eggs outside the fridge the chocolate became very soft and pliable. I knew then that it was going to be the percentage of cocoa solids in the chocolate that was going to be the issue. So after some hunting around I've found two products. Menier chocolate is produced for fine desserts and cakes and has a minimum of 29% cocoa solids in it. The second I discovered in the confectionery aisle in ASDA, has a whooping 39% cocoa solids in it.
Extra Special Peruvian Milk Chocolate - ASDA - £1.25
This second attempt at making Easter eggs has been much better, the chocolate has kept its sheen this time and overall the look of the chocolate is much better. I decided to work with the Peruvian milk chocolate for this, the one thing I did notice is that the chocolate took a while longer to cool down, but when it did it cooled a lot faster than the chocolate that I used on my first attempt. This afternoon's chocolate was better to work with and chilled a lot quicker in the fridge and you can see that in the images below.
I've decided to leave the chocolate in the fridge for an hour, including the egg halves just to make sure that it is really chilled. This is what they've turned out like. You can see the sheen on the chocolate and they seem to be holding their own, outside of the fridge. Really impressed with the outcome, although I've still got the issues about edges of the eggs, particularly when you put them together, something to think about.
