Victorian Chocolate Eggs; a Different Take on a Sugar Egg

About a month ago I stumbled upon this post "My Grandma's Victorian Sugar Eggs and Royal Icing Decorations" by Nikki Wills. I thought they were so cute! I had never seen any before and I loved them.

However, there was one thing that I didn't love about them. She has a tutorial on her blog there where she tells you how to make them, but when I read the ingredients I thought, "That doesn't sound very yummy. I don't think I would want to eat that."

Very cute, but practically inedible. Not my kind of thing. I think that food can be pretty or beautiful, but it should still be something you would actually want to eat. So I decided to try my own take on the sugar eggs and make them with chocolate instead.

1. Latex water balloons, washed (just run them under the sink and dry them off on a towel)
2. Balloon pump
3. Milk chocolate chips
4. Small bowl for mixing
5. Spoon for mixing
6. Scissors or a sewing pin
7. Small knife
8. Parchment paper
9. Masking tape (optional, not pictured)
10. Royal Icing*
11. Piping tips (use whichever ones you want - I am using a small star tip and a small writing tip
12. Piping bag with coupler OR you can use the old ziplock bag method
13. Scribe tool. Not necessary, but nice for adjusting stray icing.
14. Food coloring (optional; depends on design)
15. Small bowls for mixing
16. Spoons for mixing
17. Sprinkles, optional.

• I am using Mark Bittman's royal icing recipe, which can be found here. I am not going to walk you through how to make royal icing because there are a bajillion tutorials out there on the internet or in books.

So now we are gonna make royal icing transfers. These are actually really addicting to make and really fun.

I spread out a length of parchment paper. How much you want depends on how many transfers you will be making; and I will be making a ton of them. I can't leave my transfers just sitting where I am working, so I have put my parchment paper inside a flat baking pan so I can move them without disturbing the icing.

Next, I drew some little pictures of snowmen and Christmas trees. These will be my "stencils" that I will draw my icing over top of. I slide the sheet under the parchment paper. You can see the designs through the parchment paper so that you can draw with the icing using your original drawings as a guide. You can also freehand if you want to or draw your own designs, but if you don't, I have included a sheet you can printout with a few designs I made that you can use freely.

I added masking tape to the corners to try to keep the sheet from sliding, but it didn't really end up being that necessary.

With the food coloring, I mix a bit of green icing for the Christmas trees. I am also going to use green icing for the snowmen hats, scarves, and faces.

TIP: I am using a piping bag, but you could use a ziplock bag. Cut a small bit of one of the corners off, insert the piping tip and push it out of the bag about halfway. Take some masking tape and tape around where the cut edge of the bag meets the piping tip. This will reinforce the bag. Still be careful with it and keep an eye on it while you pipe because ziplock bags are notorious for splitting.

With the writing tip or a small round tip, simply trace the design onto the parchment paper with the icing. You can use the scribe tool to swirl the icing around and fill the design. Don't make your icing layer too thin - it will crack. Your royal icing should be around flood consistency, that is it will not hold peaks and will smooth itself out when piped.

After I pipe the snowman's body, I switch to green to pipe the hat, scarf, and face. That snowmen looks a little evil, but the next ones were better.

I do the same for the Christmas trees, but I added flat, round sprinkles on mine to be lights. You can skip that, or you could add edible glitter, or coarse sugar, whatever you want.

Leave the transfers to dry for at least one day. When they are dry, they should easily pop off with the help of the scribe tool or a toothpick. Just get under the edge and carefully push/pop it up and it should come off easily.

Once dry, these will keep indefinitely if stored in an air dry container. That is so awesome. I made a ton of them so I can use them later on cupcakes or whatever.

While your transfers are drying, it is time to make the eggs.

Cut a small sheet of parchment paper. This is where the balloons will rest while the chocolate is hardening.

Use the balloon pump to blow up the balloon. The size you make the balloon will dictate half the size of the egg. I made mine rather small because I didn't want to make a huge egg.

Pour some chocolate chips in a bowl. The size of your balloons indicate how many chocolate chips you need. You want the melted chocolate chips to come halfway up the side of the balloon. You can hold the balloon up next to the bowl to check about how much you need.

Put the chocolate chips in the microwave. Heat them carefully, a few seconds at a time, stopping between to stir. When most of the chocolate chips are melted (not all), quit heating them and just stir with the spoon until all the chocolate chips are melted. The heat from the melted chips will melt the unmelted chips as you stir.

Check that your chocolate isn't too hot by dipping a finger in it. If you can't stand to dip your finger in it it is too hot; you will have to wait for it to cool. Stir with the spoon while it is cooling to avoid lumps. Take one of the balloons and dip it in the chocolate, rolling it around until you have covered a little over halfway. Make sure to get a thick coating.

Set the balloon upright on the parchment paper. Do the same with the second balloon. Leave to dry.

Once the chocolate has dried, pop the balloon either with a pin or by trimming the top of with a pair of scissors. I found that the faster you can get the balloon to deflate, the better. The speed helps pull the balloon away from the chocolate.

Now you have two little bowls.

With a hot knife, trim the edges of the bowl that you decide will be the bottom half. Make it as even as possible all the way around. If one of your bowls is a little bigger than the other that is the one that I would recommend being the bottom of the egg.

The hot knife makes the chocolate just cut so much easier - it just glides through the chocolate. You can heat the knife either by holding it over a flame or by dunking it in really hot water. If you do the water method, make sure to dry the knife off thoroughly because chocolate doesn't like water.

Check the shape by setting the other bowl upside down on top of the newly flattened bowl. Now cut a semi-circle opening in the bottom bowl with the hot knife. Make it pretty wide and deep so that the scene inside can actually be seen.

TIP: Clean your knife off with a paper towel routinely so you don't have chocolate crumbs every where. Make sure if you reheat the knife that all the chocolate is cleaned off so you don't have burnt chocolate on your knife. That is really hard to clean off, just ask me.

Check the shape again, and this time use the knife to mark where the edge of the semicircle meets the top bowl. Mark both sides so you know where to cut. Cut a semi-circle out of the top bowl.

Check the shape again. The two sides should basically meet. Don't worry a ton about it; we will "glue" them together with icing.

Because we made the royal icing transfers, making the scene inside is easy.

First, I decided to make star shapes on the back of the egg. To pipe a star, simply use a star tip, hold it directly on the surface, straight up, squeeze out some icing, quit squeezing, and pull up the tip. You should have a little star. I piped stars all over the inside of the bowls.

Next, pipe a layer of icing in the bottom of the half that is your base. This will be the glue for our transfers. It doesn't really matter what tip you use; it is up to you. I just used the star tip because I still had it attached.

I put a Christmas tree near the backside of the egg, then I put a snowman up in the front. A very simple little scene, but nice.

Let that dry.

Place the top half on bottom half. Now you have a little globe!

Apply icing to the seam where the two chocolate halves meet. You can do this in whatever way you want. I am just doing little swirly circles with the star tip. You could do dots, shells, whatever. It just needs to be something kinda big so that it will hold the two pieces together and will cover the seam.

Once that is done, let the piece dry. You don't want to risk accidentally knocking the top half off while trying to decorate the outside.

This step is totally up to you. Draw pictures on the sides, write words, use different colors, whatever!

I decided to do simple lines coming from the top half to the middle seam using a writing tip. Not hard, but cool looking. Then I did a blob of icing on the top to finish it off.

This is the second one I made and I didn't end of making it nearly as complicated as my first one because I ran out of time. I've included photos of the first one so you could see that the possibilities are endless and it can get really complicated. I still just used the star tip and the writing tip, but I did a lot of what is called "overpiping". This is where you pipe something in royal icing, let it dry, and then pipe on top of it. I am not good at it. The tiny snowmen on top have crystal sprinkles for their faces. This one was also a lot bigger than the second one I made, which was ok, but I wanted it to be smaller.

Now you have made a cute Victorian egg inspired chocolate egg! That you can actually eat! I love the little snowman scene inside. It makes me think of Snoopy looking inside the sugar eggs on It's the Easter Beagle, Charlie Brown. I only just now realized that is what they were. I had no idea what those were when I was a kid!

I do want to add: someone who knows more about chocolate than I would would be able to temper the chocolate to prevent the funny spotted look. Tempering involves heating the chocolate to a specific temperature and keeping it there. It is what gives candy bars and such their shiny look and snap. I am a bit afeared of tempering, so I have not tried it.

I hope you liked this tutorial and that it opened up doors for you. Keep creating.