Easter Eggs 2014

Just prepared some "coloured" eggs for the easter weekend.  I did not use any dyes or food colouring. Instead, I saved up onion skins and boiled them with a little vinegar. Recipe can be found here.

Happy Holidays!

Easter 2013 Eggs

I prepared these eggs slightly different this year by adding alphabets to the eggs. The recipe and instructions remain the same as in my earlier post.

Easter Egg Muffins

I used a simple cake recipe for these muffins which are frosted with buttercream icing and decorated with mini chocolate eggs.

Ingredients (yields 24 muffins):
350 g soft butter
350 g sugar
350 g flour
1 pkt baking powder (20 g or 5 tsp)
8 eggs
muffin cases
muffin baking tin

250 g soft butter
500 g icing sugar, to be sifted
4 tsp hot water

mini chocolate eggs

Method:
Whisk butter and sugar together until creamy.  Sift flour together with baking powder into a bowl.  Add 2 tablespoons flour and an egg alternately, folding in well after each addition. Repeat until the flour and eggs are used up.

Place muffin cases into the muffin baking tin.  Drop 1 tablespoon of dough into each muffin case.  Bake in a preheated fan oven at 170° C for about 20 minutes or until done.  To check whether the muffins are done, slip a fine satay stick into the middle of muffin.  If it comes out clean, the muffins are ready.  Remove muffins onto a wire rack to cool down completely.

In a mixing bowl, whisk butter until creamy.  Add icing sugar by the spoonfuls and whisk until well combined.  Lastly, add hot water and whisk well.  Spoon mixture into a piping bag with a large star nozzle.  Pipe butter frosting onto muffins starting from the sides towards the centre.  Place a mini chocolate egg in the centre.

Happy Baking!

Polka Dots Easter Eggs

As Easter is approaching, I would like to share with you on how to prepare Polka Dots Easter Eggs.  For these eggs, I did not use any chemical dye.  Instead, I prepared a natural dye made from onion skins.  If you want to try this out for Easter this year, you better start saving your onion skins from now on.

Ingredients:
eggs, to be hard-boiled (brown or white or mixed)
onion skins
water
1 tbsp white vinegar
polka dots stickers
a little cooking oil

Method:
In a big pot, add onion skins and enough water to cover the onion skins.  Add white vinegar and stir well.  Cook mixture over medium heat for about half an hour.  Once the required tone of colour is attained, remove from heat and pour through a sieve into another pot.  Return pot to stove over low heat.

Stick polka dots stickers onto the shells of the hard-boiled eggs as shown in the photo below.

Add eggs to onion dye mixture and leave them for about 10 minutes or until the required tone of colour is attained.  Once done, remove eggs carefully by using a tablespoon.  Let them cool down slightly before removing the stickers from the eggs.  Lastly, dab a kitchen paper with a little cooking oil and rub eggs to give them a shining finish.

Happy Easter!