Muffin Easter Eggs

Easter weekend is approaching and of course I have been spending lots of time figuring out what to make for my little one on his 2nd easter (and the first one he'll actually know what's going on) I have the dinner pretty much covered but I wanted to make some cake for brunch and I came across this great idea: Muffins baked in real eggshells! How cute are these?? I think it is a great idea specially for kids -and for people who don't particularly like eggs like myself!!!

I haven't made them but I am thinking (and hoping) it won't be that hard, I will for sure let you know how it went! For the muffins you can use your favorite muffin mix recipe or you can follow the one below.

Ingredients for the muffin mix:

• ¾ cup chocolate chips.
• 1/3 cup of soft butter.
• 4 medium eggs.
• 2 ½ cups of flour.
• 1 cup of sugar.
• ¼ cup of milk.
• 1 tablespoon of baking powder.
• ½ teaspoon of vanilla extract.
• ½ teaspoon of salt.

Directions:

Preparing the eggshells:

1. Carefully poke a small hole in the top of each egg. The easiest way to do this was to use the tip of a corkscrew bottle opener or the tip of a small fork.
2. Once you have poked a tiny hole, peel back the edges of the hole to expand it a bit.The holes need to be large enough to fit the tip of a piping bag inside.  
3. Turn the egg upside-down and dump out the contents.  Keep the contents of the eggs separate to use in the cake recipe.
4. Rinse the insides of the eggs out thoroughly over the sink.Then, immerse them in saltwater for thirty minutes.   
5. Rinse the egg shells in cold water and lay the eggs hole side down on a paper towel to dry.

Preparing the muffins:

1. Preheat your oven to 200°C
2. Beat the butter and the vanilla extract together to form a light, airy mixture.
3. One at a time, add the eggs, and beat gently. Add ¼ cup of the sugar after each egg and mix thoroughly.
4. Add the baking powder and salt to the milk, then add to the mixture.Fold in the flour and the chocolate chips.
5. Load the batter into a piping bag fitted with a large round tip. Make sure that the tip can fit all of the way inside of the egg hole. If it can't, expand the hole a little bit at a time until it fits. 
6. Fill your eggs about 3/4 full with batter. This is the "hard" part: If you underfill the eggs, you won't have a complete cake egg inside when you crack them after baking but If you overfill them, cake will overflow out of the egg during baking (a bit WILL come out but that is ok, you can later remove it)
7. Pour the mix into your buttered muffin pan, filling each cup two-thirds full.Bake for 25 minutes.
8. Let cool, crack, and eat!

Tip: Once the muffins are cooked, you can paint the eggshells with vegetable pain to make them look even cuter!!




*Update*

Muffin-Eggs tested and approved! They turned out really good and cute looking, the mix did come out while baking but it was not a big disaster, in fact, those little muffin bursting tops were delicious :). So I suggest filling them just a bit over the half to avoid any "explosions". Didn't have time to paint them so I used some easter stickers that I "stole" from my little one and they looked really cute.

Recipe adapted from:cupcakeproyect.com