If you’re anything like our household, you’ll go overboard with the chocolate eggs at Easter. If that’s the case, what’s your tactic for getting through them?
Do you gorge yourself over the Easter weekend? Do you melt them down and use them in baking recipes or hot chocolate? Or do you manage to make them last for weeks (or months) by being more restrained?
This year, I’d already bought a Co-Op Easter egg hunt basket filled with hollow chocolate eggs, each the size of a hen’s egg. And then a parcel came through the door, packed to the rafters with Easter goodies, thanks to my mum.
It means the three-year-old will have plenty of chocolate to keep him going, so I thought, well, what about turning some of it into dessert for our Easter lunch?
We’ve all seen those Easter egg cheesecakes on social media – you know, the ones that take half a hollowed-out Easter egg, fill it with cheesecake filling and top it with all sorts of extravagant toppings. But I wanted to try something different.
So I came up with the idea of cheesecake dippy eggs: small hollow eggs with the top cut off, filled with cheesecake filling and something orange to resemble the yolk. For that, I decided to go for a simple peach puree, made using a tin of peach slices in juice – and it worked a treat!
If you fancy giving it a go yourself, the recipe is below. Bear in mind there will be a huge amount of leftover cheesecake filling and peach puree – I used it to make a larger cheesecake for the day before. Enjoy!
Cheesecake dippy eggs
Ingredients
- Hen egg-sized hollow chocolate eggs (one per person)
- 200 grams full-fat cream cheese
- 50 grams caster sugar
- 1 tsp vanilla paste
- 100 ml double cream
- 1 tin peach slices in juice
Instructions
- Add the cream cheese, caster sugar, vanilla paste and double cream to a bowl, and whisk well until thick and smooth
- Drain the peach slices (reserving the juice). Add to a blender and blend until smooth. Add a little of the juice if the puree is too thick.
- Unwrap the chocolate eggs. Run a small knife under a hot tap, and carefully cut around the top to form an opening. I found it easier to saw gently all the way round and repeat until completely cut through. Repeat with all of the eggs.
- Place each chocolate egg in an egg cup. Using a piping bag, a syringe or a small spoon, fill each egg with the cheesecake filling, almost to the top. Smooth the mixture to the sides, making a well for the "yolk".
- Again, using a piping bag, a small spoon or a syringe (I used one of the toddler's Calpol syringes!), fill the gap with the peach puree, ensuring that some of the white is still visible. Leave to chill in the fridge for at least two hours before serving!
You could make the “yolk” for these cheesecake dippy eggs from mango or another orange fruit – and experiment with different flavours for the cheesecake filling. You could even use biscuit or chocolate “soldiers” for dipping – I reckon chocolate fingers would work well!
Happy Easter!