Mess or Success: Easter Eggs-travaganza

[title_box title=”Mess or Success: Easter Eggs-travaganza”]

In celebration of the upcoming Easter holiday, this week’s Mess or Success is going to be an eggs-travaganza (pun SO intended).

When spring rolls around, grocery store shelves become filled with chocolate-covered egg-shaped everything, and it’s quite possibly the most wonderful time of the year. Two of the most popular of these Easter treats are the ever-so-tasty Reese’s Eggs and the classic Cadbury Crème Eggs.

With a wonderful world wide web full of homemade recipes for these holiday treats, why should we only be able to enjoy them for four months out of the year? With the help of Pinterest, let’s see if we can make our own!

For each candy, you’ll actually be using the same ingredients except for a special different one for each recipe, so it’s not only festive, but cost effective.

First up: let’s see if this recipe for Reese’s Eggs matches up to the real thing.

You’ll need:

• 1 cup peanut butter
• 1/4 cup butter
• 1 tsp. vanilla
• 1 1/2 cup powdered sugar
• 8 oz. chocolate chips

Start off by melting the butter and peanut butter in the microwave, and then stir it all together. Then, add the powdered sugar and vanilla and stir it all up until it forms Reese’s-like filling.

Divide it up into however many eggs you’re wanting to make, and then shape them into the Reese’s Egg shape with your hands. Stick them in the freezer for about half an hour so they will be easier to dip in the chocolate afterwards.

When your eggs are ready, melt the chocolate and stir it up until it’s smooth and then get to dip! The recipe says to use a fork, but when I tried that it just pulled my peanut butter mixture apart, so I dipped them by hand.

Stick them in the refrigerator and once the chocolate is hardened, you’ve got homemade Reese’s Eggs! Simple, quick and tasty.

Now, for the challenger: Cadbury Crème Eggs.

I have to admit, I’d never actually had a Cadbury Egg before this, but I made sure to try one before I got started since they’re so popular. I wasn’t that impressed, but hey, if Cadbury is what the people want, then Cadbury is what the people will get (hopefully).

You’ll need:

• 1/2 cup corn syrup
• 1/4 cup softened Butter
• 3 cup powdered sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 12 oz chocolate chips

Now this recipe started off pretty simple. The first direction are just to just cream the corn syrup, butter and vanilla together. But after that…say bye-bye to simple and easy.

Next, you’re supposed to add in three cups of powdered sugar and beat the mixture together. If your mixer is anything like mine (which was definitely a $6.99 bargain brand hand mixer from Wal-Mart), it might not be able to even mix up this stuff without smelling like it’s going to burst into flames. After the second cup of powdered sugar, my mixer wouldn’t even move the ingredients around anymore because it was so thick. So, I tried to add as much as I could, but I don’t think I quite made it all the way to three cups, which was probably my first mistake.

At this point, the Pinterest recipe tells you to add in this fancy ingredient called Invertase that you have to order special online, which is apparently responsible for making the centers of the eggs liquify. I don’t know about you, but I’m not about that science life, and it says it’s optional, so I passed on that part.

It then says to separate the filling into two parts so you can dye one part yellow and make it look like egg yolks and whites, but in the words of Sweet Brown, “ain’t nobody got time for that.” So, I’m passing on that step too because it only serves aesthetic purposes.

Next, it says to put the mixture in the refrigerator so it can firm up. You’re supposed to roll it into egg shapes and freeze them. Well, I kept my bowl of filling in the freezer for about four hours, and it still just melted in my hands. There was no way I could shape them like at all. Like no hope. So, I just dropped some of the mixture on wax paper, and hoped I could shape it up later.

Well….I kept those in the freezer for three days and they still never hardened. It was a huge sticky, runny mess, which makes absolutely no sense to me. Unfortunately I didn’t even make it to the dipping them in chocolate phase. So, you win this round Pinterest wizards.

So after one tasty success and one absolutely horrible mess, hopefully this Reese’s Egg recipe can bring some peanut butter joy to your Easter holiday. As for the Cadbury Eggs… good luck on that one, my friends. If you wish to give either one of them a try, you can find the recipes on my Mess or Success Pinterest board here, and feel free to let me know how they turn out!

That’s all for this week! Have an eggs-ellent Easter holiday weekend!

Photos by Alley Loope

Edited by Taylor Owens

Share on Facebook

Tweet this story