Spiced salted caramel chocolate eggs

Easter is here and its time to over indulge and eat chocolate until you feel a little bit sick.

I like to think of these as the healthy alternative to normal Easter eggs: eating one of these small eggs is as satisfying as devouring a whole shop bought egg and therefore you will probably end up consuming far fewer calories in the end. They are filled with sickly-sweet, salty and ever-so-slightly bitter caramel with a hint of simnel spices, and in my opinion quality over quantity is always best where chocolate is concerned.

The recipe was invented by Paul A Young, who has inspired much of chocolate month with his brilliant book Adventures with Chocolate. This is a man who can truly be described as a master chocolatier. All his products are hand made in his shops and the flavour combinations are incredible, particularly the recipe for chocolate, bacon and stilton sandwich – possibly the best bacon sandwich in the world.



I was quite pleased that I succeeded in tempering chocolate this weekend (which was partly due to the fact that I bought a large bag of Callebaut couverture chocolate, which is much easier to temper than regular chocolate) but really life is just too short for all that pfaffing about! I don’t think it’s necessary unless you want to sell them, and most people won’t even notice if you have correctly tempered the chocolate before shoving them in their gobs anyway!

Making these eggs has really given me an appreciation of the art of chocolate making. I think it takes real skill and hours of practice to be able to make consistently neat chocolate shells, but I did manage to find ways of fixing the worst of the problems (see notes below), so although they still look obviously homemade, they are holding together with no caramel leakages which is good!

I used 5.5cm egg moulds, rather than the 7.5cm ones suggested in the original recipe, I think if they were any larger they would be far too much to manage in one sitting. You can buy either size mould, plus lots of other lovely chocolate making goodies, from this online shop.



Things I have learnt from making caramel filled chocolate eggs:

Make sure you scrape the excess chocolate from the top of the mould soon after filling them with the melted chocolate. For some reason I skipped this step and it made it even more difficult to get a neat edge on the shells.

You will have 300g-400g of chocolate leftover once you have tipped the excess out of the moulds. If you cover the worktop in greaseproof paper before doing this it will be easier to break into pieces and tip into a food bag for use in future baking projects.

As you can see from the pictures, some of the eggs had very thin edges which were not suitable for sticking together. To resolve this, simply pipe a small amount of chocolate just inside the edge of the filled half, then scrape it flat with a palette knife once set.

Due to the uneven edges I found I had small gaps in places once the two halves were stuck together. You can fill these with a little melted chocolate piped into the gaps and then smoothed over with a palette knife once set.

Make sure your hands are cool when you stick the eggs together so you don’t leave sticky marks on the outsides of the shells. If they get too warm run them under cold water for a while and then dry thoroughly before continuing



Spiced salted caramel chocolate eggs: makes 8 x 5.5cm eggs
(adapted from Paul A Young’s recipe which was published in Delicious magazine)

600g dark chocolate
75g unsalted butter
50g light muscovado sugar
25g dark muscovado sugar
½ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon cinnamon
¼ teaspoon nutmeg
¼ teaspoon allspice
75ml double cream
20g milk chocolate
10ml rum (or other liqueur), optional
Gold food dust, for decorating

Make the caramel:

• Place the butter, sugar, salt and spices in a pan over a medium-low heat
• Bring to a simmer and allow to bubble gently for 8 minutes
• Remove from the heat and mix in the cream, followed by the milk chocolate and rum, continuing to stir until fully combined
• Leave to cool fully before using

Make the chocolate shells:

• Using a clean dry paint brush, brush a small amount of gold food dust to coat the insides of the egg moulds, then with a little more dust on the brush tap it over the moulds to create the speckles
• Melt the chocolate and temper (see instructions here) or just pour straight into the moulds
• Place a large sheet of greaseproof paper on a work surface

 

• Tap the mould on the work top a few times to get rid of any air bubbles then scrape off the excess onto the paper with a pastry bench scraper
• Leave the chocolate to set for 3 minutes 
• Turn the mould upside down over the greaseproof paper, allowing the chocolate to pour out which should leave a coating of chocolate round the outsides of the mould
• Quickly scrape the tops of the moulds flat with a palette knife, then turn the moulds upside down and leave on the worktop to set
• Once set, you can scrape any further uneveness from the edges with a palette knife and then turn the mould upside down again, and tap it gently on the worktop to remove the egg shells from the moulds 

Assembling the chocolate eggs:

• Fill the chocolate shells with the cooled caramel

• Fill a piping bag with 50g of melted chocolate and snip a very small hole in the end
• Use this chocolate to do any necessary repairs to the shells before continuing (see notes above)
• Pipe a small amount of chocolate onto the edge of one shell and stick two of the halves together, pressing together firmly to make sure they stick, and repeat with all the other half shells
• Fill any small cracks in the sides of the eggs with more of the chocolate from the piping bag and smooth any rough edges with a palette knife

Happy Easter!