Easter egg

*Post alert*

There are some pictures at the end but don't look until you've read the words for maximum effect. I should have taken photos as I went. Unfortunately for us all , I didn't.
*Post alert*

It being Easter and having seen a suitable mould in Abraxas (the great local cookshop in Banbury), I thought I would have a go at making Easter eggs for the traditional family get-together.

It all seems pretty straight forward. Melt some chocolate, pour it into a mould and let cool. Easy. (I couldn't be doing with all this tempering malarkey). For a little bit of interest I thought I'd do a milk outer layer, white middle layer and a thin dark inner layer. Then decorate with a little icing.

However, I'm not sure the phrase "easier said than done" has never found a more apt use. Needless to say, things didn't quite go to plan.

I'd done a little bit of research on the interweb and it was clear that it would be necessary to take it step by step and build up the egg in stages to avoid the chocolate just pooling in the middle resulting in a very thick centre and very thin walls.

It all went well with the outer milk chocolate layer. I took my time and took great care to only add a small amount of melted chocolate, moving it around the mould to get an even covering, (although building up the sides was tricky) then leaving it to cool. Before repeating the process.

It was when I started on the white layer that it all went Pete Tong. As soon as I put the first spoonful of white chocolate in, it started melting the milk layer. Then it all just started to pool in the bottom. I guess I must have had the chocolate slightly too hot. I left it to set and tried again with slightly cooler chocolate. Same result. And the white chocolate had started to get through to the surface somehow.

I decided that my three distinct layer of different chocolates was not going to happen. Instead I just melted the dark into the white and layered up as I had done with the original milk chocolate layers.

One half down, I melted all the chocolate together and produced a reasonable second half. A little melted chocolate was used to sandwich the two halves together and I left the whole egg in the freezer overnight to set.

What I took out of the freezer seemed reasonable and I set about decorating with very thick icing. However, it didn’t occur to me that as the thing defrosted, moisture would gather on the surface thus wash away the icing.

All in all a catalogue of errors. Mainly down to my lack of patience, I reckon. Not sure I’ll be in too much of a hurry to repeat. Although eating the leftover warm chocolate was very nice…