Who Needs Cadbury? **RECIPE ALERT**

Although I am not a Christian, I look forward to the Easter season because that is when you can find some of the best candy EVER.  Peeps, Cadbury creme eggs, chocolate bunnies... oh, it all makes my mouth water.

I do have a special weakness for Peeps and Creme Eggs, though, I must say.  I tend to gorge myself on those marshmallowy, sugary shapes of bunnies and birds until I get sick (I prefer the birds over the bunnies because you can bite the head off) and one creme egg generally has enough sugar and richness to make my eyes roll back in in my head... and hold me over for an entire year.

But alas, on the Au Naturale diet, such treats are a no-no.  Goodness knows what goes into the filling of a creme egg.  And I've become more worried in the past few years about the sanitation of those things: do you notice how the foil wrapper never quite makes it all the way around, leaving a small piece of the chocolate egg exposed?  I don't want to think about what it has touched on it's way to my mouth.

But I digress.  Does one roll over and submit when faced with the possibility of being denied a rare treat?  NO!  One finds a way to adapt the treat to them.  And so I bring you a recipe for homemade Cadbury Creme Eggs.

Be forewarned, though: just because these are homemade does not in any sense mean that they are healthy.  At all.  I have 16 of them and plan on eating at max 1, maybe 2, and then giving the rest away. The sugary-ness will once again tide me over for another year.

I have listed the recipe below with some modifications and personal tips that are italicized. These are incredibly, incredibly easy to make: it does take a long time but 90% of the recipe requires nothing more than for the eggs to sit in the freezer and firm up.  However, some of the 10% of the active time must be done quickly.  The gooey filling turns, well, gooey quite quickly once you take it out of the freezer, so if you don't work fast enough you will have quite a mess on your hands.  In addition, I have taken out the steps to create the "yolk". While eliminating it doesn't alter the flavor (but does eliminate some time), creating the fake yolks of the eggs requires the use of food coloring which is about as un-Au Naturale as you can get.  So egg "whites" it is.  If you want the steps for the yolks, though, just message me and I'll send them to you.

And one more quick note, and I promise I'm done (am I a tease, or what?).  A very nice and generous woman who works on my floor takes the time to hide plastic easter eggs filled with candy around the office every year.  It really is a happy treat to sit down at your desk and see an egg poking out of your pen cup, or hours later turning around and finding another one hiding amongst the files.  Today, 3 days after the eggs showed up, I found a third balancing precariously on the top of a framed map hanging on my wall.  I was somewhat surprised at my own glee at discovering it.

In any case, I've been trying to resist the candy inside (it's like the Evil Bar of Doom took up residence at my desk) but today I was just starving in the afternoon and ate a super-mini Kit Kat and a super-mini Krackle, like the kind you hand out at Halloween.  It was probably about an ounce of candy total, but the whole bus ride home I just felt HEAVY.  It was then that I realized how much my body has adapted to not eating crap and filler.  I couldn't remember the last time I felt so remorseful about eating anything.  To be clear, I haven't eliminated chocolate from my diet, I've just been careful to make sure that it was pure, as in absent of preservatives and additives.  So as gross as I felt, my heading leaning against the bus window, I also felt a sense of pride that my new diet has once again proven itself to have a positive effect on my body and my health.

Enough!  You have earned this recipe.  Enjoy!

Homemade Cadbury Creme Eggs
Ingredients:
1/2 cup light corn syrup
1/4 cup butter (softened, not melted)
1/4 teaspoon salt
3 cups powedered sugar, sifted
1 (12 oz) bag milk chocolate chips
2 teaspoons vegetable shortening

Directions:
1.  Combine the corn syrup, butter, vanilla and salt in a large bowl

2. Beat well with an electric mixer until smooth

3. Add powdered sugar, a little bit at a time and mix by hand after each addition

4.  Mix until creamy:

5.  Cover the mixture and chill for at least 2 hours (fridge is okay) or until firm

6.  Form into the shape of eggs and place on a lightly greased cookie sheet or wax paper.  You can use egg molds, but I did it by hand.  And because I had neither the skill nor the speed (remember, work fast!) to create free-form egg shapes, I settled for "bullets":

7.  Repeat until done and chill for at least 4 hours in the freezer.  You want them "set"

8.  Combine the chocolate chips and shortening in a double boiler or ceramic bowl

9.  Melt down and mix well

10.  Take each egg filling, dip into the melted chocolate mixture and return to baking sheet. I started by stabbing the bottom of them with wooden skewers, like I was making popsicles, and dipping them that way.  however, they easily fell off the skewers as the warmed up.  I then took to just dumping them in bowl and using 2 spoons to roll them around until they were coated:

the ones on the right side of the pan got extra dipping, so you can see they turned out thicker

11.  Repeat and chill again for 2 hours in the freezer

12.  Repeat the dipping process, chill again and you're good to go!

The shape ain't pretty... sorry.  If I used a mold, it probably would have been.  But the messiness gives it character, no?