Edible Ukrainian Easter Eggs

For my partner’s birthday, I decided to make edible Ukrainian Easter eggs. Ukraine’s traditional Easter eggs are very intricate and beautiful, and considering the anniversary of the invasion of Ukraine coincided with both Easter and his birthday, I thought this would be a fitting gift.

Due to the difficulty of the recipe I’ve received some requests for instructions. It took me several days to develop the recipe, and a full day to make the whole thing, so I’ve included tips on how to make it easier. The short form (very succinct summary) is at the bottom.

To save eggshells, use a thumbtack to poke a hole in each

end of an egg. Make the hole in the base slightly larger. If you have trouble with the thumbtack, you can also use a chopstick, but I found it easiest to make a few holes in a little circle and peel of the shell. Also, if you’re using them for cake batter, having the hole on an angle helps keep the batter from running out.

Hold the egg over a bowl and blow on the top hole so the egg comes out. If the hole in the base is large enough the yolk won’t break. Rinse the inside of the egg out with water and let it dry.

Ingredients

2 cups flour

1.5 granulated white sugar

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon salt

¾ cup) salted butter,

2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

3 large eggs, room temperature

1 + cups milk, room temperature

1 package pudding

Note: My pudding was vanilla, but my partner thinks it would be good with chocolate. All ingredients should be at room temperature. I actually used twice as much baking powder and it was a little too much. This recipe is based off of both pound and yellow cake recipes. You may want to reduce the amount of pudding or vanilla extract if you want it to taste less like vanilla.

Quantity: I had 18 eggshells, so that’s what I made, but had enough to make ~ 2 dozen. Leftover was placed in muffin papers and baked separately.

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Combine in large bowl dry ingredients. Add butter, vanilla and half of milk. Mix, add eggs and rest of milk. Mix well. The texture will be fairly thick, but should not have large clumps. (I mixed by hand not with a machine, if you use a machine you probably won’t have this problem).

Make holes larger, on an angle so you can place them in

muffin tray and the batter will not run out. Grease eggs with oil. You can probably stick your finger into the egg to rub the sides with oil in order to avoid excess oil, but egg edges are sharp so if this hurts you can also pour the oil into the eggs using two small containers to pour it into the egg and catch it respectively.

Pour the batter into the eggs. I used a wooden spoon and my fingers also to scrape off excess batter from the sides of the eggs. Tap the egg lightly against your hand to get rid of air pockets. Don’t fill them all the way up, as the batter will expand significantly while baking.

Bake at 350 degrees for 30-35 minutes. A stick/toothpick will come out clean.

Allow to cool, trim excess cake off eggshell (perfectly good to eat!), and gently roll eggs to break eggshell. If cake sticks to egg, use knife to gently loosen it and press batter onto to egg body.

Note: Fondant is messy and difficult, you could theoretically use cake frosting or dip eggs in melted chocolate. Buying fondant is definitely not worthwhile for this and would be difficult to apply to eggs. However, my “paint” worked well on this since I used a thinner frosting on top to do the decoration.

Ingredients:

Marshmallows (1 bag mini marshmallows is best)

Powdered Sugar (Recipe calls for two pound bag, I only used about half. You will need to retain some for last part of egg recipe).

Crisco or oil in liberal quantities to avoid being permanently glued to your countertop by the a solid block of sugar

Directions:

Place mini marshmallows into a microwave safe bowl, sprinkle liberally with water. Eggs, you only need about half a recipe, but extra fondant stores well in fridge.

Microwave marshmallows until they melt, and stir until smooth. (Check every 30 seconds or so while microwaving). Add as much powdered sugar as you can mix into the bowl. The substance will become extremely sticky.

Cover a countertop or work surface liberally with Crisco. Prepare an extra plate covered in Crisco. Lightly grease a cookie tray. Use your hands and rub them generously with Crisco too.

Dump the goop onto the countertop and add more sugar. (This is important, it’s the sugar that makes it slightly less like instant superglue). Knead the Fondant. It might feel like you’re being sucked into the evil Pillsbury dough boy from the ghost busters. That feeling of sinking despair is the fondant solidifying. It’s ok. Continue to knead and add sugar, until you’ve added at more than half the bag of powdered sugar. Add small amounts of water if the Fondant breaks when you stretch it. It should stretch smoothly. If it does not stop being so sticky you think you will never emerge alive, you can attempt to extract your hands and cover them in Crisco again.

If it stretches smoothly and is getting a shiny surface that means it’s about ready. I recommend letting the Fondant sit for about 5-10 minutes, covering your hands in Crisco again, and attempting to scoop it into a ball. If at this point you can mold it into a ball without it sticking to you it should be useable. Place the ball on the greased plate.

Once the fondant is smooth, you can break off small pieces at this point, roll them in your hands to make them smooth and round, and then stretch them into a size where they will cover an egg. Quickly wrap the egg, and pat the edges together with your fingertips to smooth them out. You can also try covering the eggs like a cake, by rolling the fondant out, draping it over the eggs, and cutting off the excess, but mine was still too sticky and I found it easier to wrap the eggs by hand. Be very careful rolling eggs between your palms to smooth them as this may cause the fondant to lose its grip on the eggs. People often frost cakes to help fondant grip the surface, but I felt that was unnecessary. Let the eggs sit on the lightly greased cookie tray. This is where the fondant will set and where you can paint the eggs.

Ingredients:

reference photos (optional)

Thin brushes or instruments (I used some fairly nice children’s paint brushes and the same shish kebab sticks I used to check if the batter was cooked through)

Lemon juice

Powdered Sugar

Food coloring

Set of small containers, 1 for each color

Instructions

Mix a little bit of powdered sugar and food coloring, roughly a teaspoon of each should be more than enough to start with, and a drop of each color you want per container. One brush or utensil per container.

I found using the little wooden sticks- toothpicks would work well too, was useful in conjunction with the brushes to make find lines in the fondant that could be filled with the “paint” by the paintbrushes since this frosting works a lot like watercolor.

If you find that the “paint” is beading, try adding a little more sugar. If it’s drying up, add a few drops of lemon juice and stir with your brush, since it is likely to retain some moisture.

I got my patterns from a variety of sources, including looking at several traditional patterns via google images and some fun ones (like the hearthstone logo). If you want to do a solid color base, you will need a few minutes to let it dry before adding the next color on top.

TL;DR:

Vanilla Cake

2 cups flour

1.5 granulated white sugar

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon salt

¾ cup) salted butter,

2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

3 large eggs, room temperature

1 + cups milk, room temperature

1 package pudding

Everything should be at room temp. Combine dry ingredients, mix. Add wet ingredients except eggs, mix. Add eggs. Mix.

For edible eggs:

Grease eggshells, pour batter into eggs.

Bake at 350 degrees for 30-35 minutes

Peel eggs.

Make fondant by mixing marshmallows and powdered sugar and water until it stops being sticky and gets smooth and shiny.

Cover eggs in Fondant.

Paint fondant with food coloring, which can be mixed with lemon juice and powdered sugar to make it stick.

Sources

I borrowed my fondant recipe from this lovely lady, and my cake recipe was inspired by several others, though it is my own creation.

http://whatscookingamerica.net/PegW/Fondant.htm

http://www.cooks.com/recipe/tb8vw5q3/easy-one-bowl-yellow-cake.html

http://www.joyofbaking.com/PoundCake.html

http://www.livestrong.com/article/547557-what-does-milk-do-in-baking/