Hello!! Happy Easter/Passover everyone! To celebrate, I made giant chocolate eggs filled with white chocolate mousse and mango gelée. I meant to make many (smaller) eggs, but because I went egg mould shopping a little too last minute, I was stuck with these huge moulds from the dollar store. This resulted in two giant eggs.
As a child I always enjoyed the idea of searching for Easter eggs that were hidden by the Easter bunny. Now as an adult, I still search for eggs hidden by the bunny. Just kidding, but I do love chocolate eggs as much as I did back then, so I thought, why not make my own?!
I started by making the mango gelée inserts (recipe below) first — and these were going to be used to resemble the yolks of an egg.
I continued on to work on chocolate moulds. I painted and decorated the moulds using cocoa butter. I took about 20g plain cocoa butter, which I got from Bulk Barn in the organic food section, and coloured it using about 5-10 drops white cocoa butter and Wilton candy (fat-soluble) colours. I had red and yellow so I decided to use pastel pink and yellow, since Easter is all about pastels.
I gently heated them over a small saucepan with an inch of simmering water, to melt the cocoa butter. You want to make sure it doesn’t go past 34C/93.2F, or else your cocoa butter will go out of temper. If your cocoa butter goes out of temper, it will not set, and will not come off of your chocolate mould.
A good way to ensure that your cocoa butter does not go out of temper is by keeping an instant read thermometer nearby, and also by putting it on heat for a few minutes, and then taking it off heat and agitating/mixing it with a spatula. Once my cocoa butter was at 32C/89.6F, I took a couple clean paintbrushes I bought just for food, then I splattered and painted the colours onto the moulds.
Afterwards, I got to work on tempering chocolate for my egg shells, and although I did a layer of both white chocolate and dark, I recommend sticking with just one to avoid your chocolate shells from being too thick. I table-tempered my chocolate — so I melted about 300 g over a post of simmering water, took out 85% onto my clean quartz countertop and spread it around, then brought it back to the center a couple times to agitate the chocolate and create crystallization. I took the chocolate off the counter and back into my bowl to mix when the white chocolate was at 27C/80.6F, and 29C/84.2F for dark. After that happens, you want to bring all your chocolate to 32C/89.6F — the ideal working temperature for chocolate, but never past 34C/93.2F or your chocolate is out of temper. Let me know if you would like me to do a more in-depth video/tutorial on tempering chocolate!
After pouring chocolate into my moulds, and dumping out the excess chocolate to create the egg shells, I made the coconut macaroons (recipe below) and the white chocolate mousse (recipe also below!). When making the white chocolate mousse, you have to make a crème anglaise, which is similar to crème patissiere (chocolate crème patissiere recipe on the blog!), but without the cornstarch, and lighter texture.
Keep in mind that you should never, EVER, put your mousse into the fridge, or wait to use it because it will set if it cools, and once it sets, it will not want to work with you.
Once my mousse was made and my shells were out of the moulds, I piped the mousse in, popped the frozen mango “egg yolks” in, and there is the egg! You can choose to keep it open halfwise, or you can seal it up like I did. You do this, by refrigerating the egg to set the mousse (mine set in 15 minutes — you can check it by tilting your egg and seeing if the mousse looks like it’ll run out. If it stays put as you’re tilting, your mousse is set!). Then you take some tempered chocolate and piping it along the edge of the egg, and stick your two halves together.
I cleaned up the edges by trimming with a sharp pairing knife and running over melted tempered chocolate with a baby offset spatula. There you go!! A giant white chocolate mousse and mango gelée filled chocolate egg! Enjoy!
Mango Gelée
Ingredients
121 mL mango purée
4g powdered gelatin
31 mL cold water to bloom the gelatin
Method
- Bloom the gelatin by sprinkling over the cold water.
- Bring your mango purée to a boil in a small saucepan on high heat. Take off heat, and dissolve your gelatin in the hot mango purée.
- Pour into semi sphere moulds, cover with saran wrap, and chill to room temperature, and then put into the freezer to freeze (this makes it easier to pop out when it is needed).
Coconut Macaroon Nests
Ingredients
400g shredded sweetened coconut
210g sweetened condensed milk
5g (1 tsp) almond extract
5g (1 tsp) vanilla extract
2 egg whites
3g (1/2 tsp) salt
Method
1. preheat your oven to 163C/325F.
2. mix together the coconut, condensed milk, almond extract, and vanilla extract.
3. using a hand mixer or stand mixer with a whisk attachment, whip your egg whites and salt on high speed until your egg whites are at medium peaks.
4. Fold your egg white into your coconut mixture.
5. Scoop the batter out using an ice cream scoop, and make an indent in the center using clean fingers, to create a nest shape.
6. Bake for 15min or until golden brown.
White Chocolate Mousse
Ingredients
5g powdered gelatin
32 mL cold water
356 mL heavy cream
233g white chocolate
125 mL milk
5 mL vanilla extract
5 mL lemon extract
7g (1/2 tbsp) sugar
2 egg yolks
1. Bloom your gelatin by sprinkling it over cold water.
2. Whip your heavy cream to soft peaks (just until it holds a bit of shape), cover and refrigerate.
3. Melt your white chocolate, and set aside.
Make a creme anglais
4. put your milk, vanilla extract, and lemon extract in a small saucepan over medium heat.
5. Whisk your egg yolks and sugar in a separate bowl. Once your milk starts simmering, pour or ladle a small amount of hot milk into your egg yolks at a time, until about half of your milk is in the bowl with the eggs. Whisk the egg yolks simultaneously. This tempers your egg yolks and bring the temperature up without cooking the egg yolks.
6. Return the egg and milk mixture to the saucepan, cook it until it is thick enough to coat the back of a spoon.
7. Strain the creme anglais and add in the bloomed gelatin to dissolve.
8. Once the creme anglais and the white chocolate are warm but not hot to the touch, mix them together.
9. Fold in your whipped cream, a third at first to lighten the mixture, and then the remaining 2/3 of whipped cream.
10. Pipe or pour into the moulds immediately, and refrigerate to set.
Check out the video tutorial below!! Enjoyyyyy
ally bakes 
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