Have you ever blown out eggs? I guess that using an ear syringe won’t make you quite so dizzy, but they are a pain to empty. Why not just use egg shaped molds?
Did you click on that link, Bear?
She says it’s “easy”. Yeah. She is on a campaign to make people crazy.
You have to by Trulalalalala-whatever brand dark chocolate, so that you can heat it to 131 degrees (most chocolate can only be heated to 118) (I did not know that) (I do not care).
After you heat it, then you cool it, and then warm it back up again. Now right there, we’re talking major stupid. She’s got people chopping it up, separating out some, puting it back in, and spreading it around for a while on a marble work surface (with an “offset spatula” no less) (WTF is an "offset spatula?).
And this is after you’ve blown your eggs (through the hole you made with your 3/8" drill), sterilized them, colored them, patted them dry, let them sit, blah blah blah.
That woman needs a sex life. This is entirely too much playing with eggs.
It wouldn’t be so bad if she’d just come out and be honest. Say, “I’m bored off my butt with these seasonal projects, but my editor says I’ve got to publish something and I had 3 days to kill farting around with it. If you’re bored and you’ve got 3 days to kill, give this a go. At the end of it you’ll have exactly what you started out with - chocolate - but it’ll be stuck inside an egg. Happy Easter.”
Does anyone believe Martha actually do those projects? I imagine it’s like a Testor model kit – you see this super-polished ultra-realistic result on the box, but if you try it on your own, it requires 10x more time and 50x more patience than the sales pitch implies.
Except that at least with the model kits, you can eventually get the slick results. Wouldn’t surprise me if it turns out Martha’s instructions have no bearing on the reality of the project…
I must object. Martha Stewart directions, if I follow them closely, have given me the results advertised everytime I have followed them. This is not true of directions from Women’s Day and other women’s magazines. Yes, much of her suggestions are quite complex, and not for the faint of heart, but they work. I think that there are editors in other publications that go through and just delete essential steps that sound to complicated or don’t read well. I followed several of her recipes in the cookies book she published last fall and they all worked. Some were more work that I ever want to do again and others have become favorites. All looked very much like their photographs.
I will not debate the sanity of chocolate filled eggshells, but I would wager that you can make them according to her directions.
An offset spatula is one that has a bend in the blade like a pancake turner. Regular spatulas have blade in line with the handle like a regular knife.
The marble work surface is mainly to keep a steady temperature. The marble will suck out the heat that kneading the mixture builds up. That way you get a pliable mixture and not a melted one. All these steps are likely to build up to a certain texture and work air through the mix. Air makes a big difference in texture of the final product.
I take the lazy way out. I make hard-boiled eggs and drain the hot water off. Immediately after that, with the hot eggs still in the pot, I squirt the food color over the eggs (startng with yellow). I let them sit a few seconds, then rinse them off with cold water. The results are a multicolor pastel egg, often with a very bright and very different pattern on the egg itself (revealed when you peel them, obviously).
I use lead paint.
I haven’t dyed Easter eggs in years, but we always used the good old-fashioned PAAS kits when I was a kid.
This sounds fun now that they have food dyes in neon colors along with the traditional ones. I think I might have to try it.