Simple Savory & Satisfying: Cupcakes Baked Inside an Easter Egg

Easter candy is probably my favorite candy. I love jelly beans, robin eggs, Cadbury eggs, chocolate bunnies and so on. This year I hoped to make some of my own Easter candy. But Easter seemed to creep up on me this year, so the homemade jelly beans and Cadbury eggs will have to wait until next year. But I was able to make cupcakes inside an Easter eggs (and chocolate ganache Easter eggs). This recipe comes from the Cupcake Project. Not only is it a cool concept, but the cake comes out tasty and incredibly moist.

Ingredients:
8 large, hollowed out eggshells
1/2 cup flour
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/8 teaspoon baking soda
pinch of salt
1 egg
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup butter, room temperature
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/4 cup sour cream
food coloring, optional

Directions:
To hollow out the eggshells, poke a small hole in the top of each egg. I followed the Cupcake Project's suggest of using a corkscrew bottle opener. When I was a kid, my mom always made us an Easter tree. In case you don't know what an Easter tree is (Eric had never heard of one before he met me), it's a tree--we always used branches for the tree, but you could use a fake tree from a craft store--decorated with colored Easter eggs that have been hollowed. If I remembered correctly, my mom used a nail to make the tiny hole in the eggs. You could also use an ice pick or even a small screwdriver. For this recipe you need the hole large enough to fit the tip of a pastry bag, so widen the hole by carefully breaking the edges.

To get the egg out of the shell, use a skewer to scramble the yolk and whites. Then pour the egg into a bowl to use for another purpose (French toast, scrambled eggs, a cake).

Rinse the eggshell out with water and set it upside-down on a paper towel to dry. When the eggs are dry, place them on a cookie sheet and bake them for 10 minutes at 300 degrees in order to kill any bacteria.

If you want, you can then dye the eggs to make them more festive. I did this using Kool-Aid.

As your eggshells cool, make your batter. In a small bowl, mix the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt together. Set aside. In a large bowl, combine the egg and sugar until the mixture is creamy. Stir in the butter and vanilla extract. Add the dry ingredients and mix until well combined. Finally, stir in the sour cream and food coloring (if desired. I made my cupcakes green).

Position the eggshells in a cupcake tin, using tin foil to help them stand up straight. Transfer the batter into a pastry bag, or a plastic Ziploc bag with the corner cut off (this is what I did). Pipe the batter into the eggshell. The cake will rise so only fill it 3/4 full.

3/4 full

The Cupcake Project warned that this can be a bit difficult to judge (it was!), so if your cupcakes overflow (mine did!) you can just clean them off after they bake.