Chocolate Easter Eggs (Space Edition)

Originally I made these eggs for the Easter of 2016 and the ambitions were to share them with my staff at the observatory. Alas - time was too short and by the time I got around to go through with my plan, everybody (including myself) had already gone home for the holidays. Oh well, maybe next year…

These things, which are easily mistaken for being ordinary eggs or decorative ceramic eggs (depending on whether you choose to paint them or not), actually hide delicious chocolate and will be much appreciated as Easter party treats or as gifts to whomever you think should have them.

The chocolate eggs are not difficult to make, but you will need a certain amount of time and patience to do this so if you'll have a party on Friday, you may want to start on the Tuesday (or Wednesday if you have a lot of time) in order to complete all the steps.

Now let's get started!

You'll need:

• Eggs (the number of your choice - I used 10 large eggs)
• Chocolate, chips or good quality bars (in an amount corresponding to the size and number of eggs. A large egg needs approximately 100 grams of chocolate. Thus I used almost a kilogram of chocolate. If you use small eggs you'll only need half of the amount)
• Approximately a tablespoon of cocoa butter for each 100 grams of chocolate that you use.
• A pin
• A bowl
• 1 tablespoon of vinegar
• Masking tape
• A kitchen towel
• A large sauce pan
• Two small sauce pans
• A spoon
• A forcing bag tool. I used a Decopen tool but they are expensive and you can really do with any forcing bag as long as you choose the most narrow nozzle possible.

If you'll want to paint the eggs, you'll need additional tools such as brushes, water colours or egg paint, or why not just leave them naturally white?

In case of wanting to paint them the way I did, you'll also need:

• Airbrush equipment (gun plus compressor)
• Acrylic airbrush paint, colours: black, white, process cyan, process magenta, dark purple and -if you want- a semi-transparent shimmering blue colour (or any colour of your choice, really).
• A small, thin paint brush
• Paper to cover any surface you'll be working on

Bring out your carton of eggs from the fridge.

Use the pin to make one small hole on the top (the narrow part) of the egg. Then use the pin to make a circle of tiny holes (very close to each other) in the bottom part of the egg. The circle should have a diameter of approximately 1 centimeter.

Remove the punched-out circle.

Blow out the contains of the eggs. Just put your lips to the small pin hole of the egg and blow the contains into a bowl. Remember not to throw it away - you can use the eggs for baking or cooking (I made a huge omelette!).

Save the egg carton for step 2.

Sterilize the eggs

You will not want any remains of egg in the shell and the easiest way to get rid of it is to do the following:

Bring water to boil in a pan with a tablespoon of vinegar. Bring to a simmer and put the egg shells into the pan for about 10 minutes.

Fetch the egg shells, run them thoroughly through with cold water and let dry on a kitchen towel for a few hours or over night. Large hole facing down.

Cut out small parts of masking tape and stick them to the small holes of the egg shells.

Put the egg shells back into their original carton package with the large holes facing upwards.

Pour the chocolate chips into the small sauce pan, but be careful - you will not want to melt more chocolate than what fits in an egg. If you melt more that what one egg requires, the chocolate will turn solid or grainy as you work on filling the egg shell. You'll have to melt 75-100 grams of chocolate for every large egg and approximately 50 grams of chocolate for smaller eggs.

Turn on the stove, fill the large sauce pan with water and bring to a boil. As soon as the water is boiling, turn off the stove. As you're waiting for the water to boil, melt the first tablespoon of cocoa butter

Sink the small saucepan (containing the chocolate) into the heated water and stir with the spoon until the chocolate is melted.

Add the melted cocoa butter to the melted chocolate and stir.

Adding the cocoa butter is a very important step - without it, the egg shells will be difficult to peel from the solid chocolate. Also, the added cocoa butter will prevent the chocolate from turning solid all too fast.

Use the spoon to scoop the melted chocolate into the forcing bag.

Fill the egg shells with the melted chocolate using the forcing bag tool. This will take some time so again I'll have to ask you to be patient. Tap the egg occasionally in order to make air pockets disappear. Repeat this step until you're done with all the eggs.

Let the chocolate eggs cool in room temperature until the shells are not warm anymore, then store in fridge over night to make sure that the chocolate filling will turn completely solid.

If you don't want to paint your eggs, you're done by now. Thanks for reading this Instructable. I hope that you have appreciated it!

If you're not done - proceed to step 4!

You've decided to paint your eggs! That means that you'll need to cover up the exposed large holes. This can easily be done by cutting a circle piece of masking tape like shown on the photo. Stick it onto the large hole and smoothen the edges with your fingers. Personally I didn't use any masking tape, but was only utterly careful not spraying the precious chocolate with any paint. If you want to paint the eggs your own way, I thank you for your attention and hope that you'll have fun!

If you want to know how I painted the stuff, proceed to step 5.

Cover your working area with paper.

Bring out your airbrush gear and prepare the gun with black paint.

Spray the eggs evenly with black paint and let dry.

Let your fantasy flow. Blend cyan, magenta, purple and white as you ilk, in all combinations possible and spray the eggs unevenly where you want the "nebulas" to be. Repeat this with different colours, preferably so that the new paint merges with the first layer. Don't forget to let the paint dry before you spray on a new layer, otherwise the new paint may dissolve previous layers. Repeat until you're satisfied. Let dry again.

Make the stars:

Blend white and and cyan so that you get a very light blue colour and pray small circular areas on selected areas of the egg. Let dry for a few minutes. At this point you can clean and put away your airbrush gear, but keep the white paint next to you and prepare the small painting brush.

Dip the paint burnish into the white paint and add small dots into the centre of each -as above mentioned- sprayed circular area. If you want to, you can add extra star dots outside of these areas, but remember that less is more - especially in space!

Enjoy your space painted chocolate eggs!