Make your own fondant eggs
Sales of the Cadbury’s Creme Egg have seen a £6 million loss, after the company changed the chocolate component last year from Dairy Milk to a standard cocoa version - and egg fans are not happy!
The decision was made four years ago after the Bourneville-based firm was taken over by a subsidiary of American company, Kraft. Before the drastic recipe change, the eggs had been an Easter favourite since their debut 50 years ago.
Cadbury told us, "The fundamentals of the Cadbury Creme Egg remain exactly the same as 1971; from the size of the egg to the original recipe with Cadbury chocolate and a unique gooey creme filling. In fact, only six out of 45 years of our creme egg history saw the shell made with Cadbury Dairy Milk."
The good news is, you can make your own fondant-filled egg, and chocolatier Paul A Young is here to show us how!
Paul's fondant eggs
Serves: makes 6 eggs
Ingredients
800g milk chocolate of your choice100g sugar100g water500g white fondant icingYellow and orange food colouring
Method
Take 800g chocolate and melt it in a bain marie to 45C. Never a microwave, it won’t achieve a good melt and may burn the chocolate.
Pour two-thirds of the chocolate on to a large marble surface. Ideally you will have this installed already and call it your counter. Temper it with a palette knife and a scraper, moving, spreading, piling in, spreading again, moving, until it starts to solidify.
Plonk it back into the remaining third of still melted chocolate. Mix well until evenly smooth. Pour the whole lot into your mould and tap to release any air bubbles.
Leave it for two to three minutes. Pour out the excess. Put the shells in the fridge for 20 minutes.
Put 100g sugar and 100ml water into a pan and dissolve to make sugar syrup
Take 500g of white fondant icing, cut it in half, pummel yellow food colouring into one half.
Grate the icing and mix it with sugar syrup until it is the consistency of buttercream icing
Fill each shell half with white fondant then a dollop of yellow for the yolk and stick the two halves together with a little melted chocolate
Your eggs will – but are unlikely to – last for one month!