Every year on February 15th, you can count on every grocery and big-box store switching from Valentine’s candy to Easter treats. That’s usually at least 6 weeks before Easter with all the pretty pastel temptations to walk by. But honestly, my stomach churns at the idea of eating any of that artificial sugar-filled stuff.
This year, I decided to mix things up a bit. Rather than using the regular semi-sweet chocolate, I switched over to white chocolate. And I know that paleo white chocolate is really hard to find, because almost all of it contains dairy, but sometimes we splurge. If you can’t have dairy and really want the white chocolate, there are some dairy free options (to buy –that contain rice– or DIY), or you could certainly switch over to our favorite semi-sweet chocolate, Enjoy Life Brand.
Speaking of white chocolate, you can’t just have white eggs on Easter. They have to be all sorts of pretty pastel colors. Enter Color Kitchen Foods and their line of plant-based food colors. They come in powder form and are absolutely perfect for mixing in with white chocolate to keep it from seizing up. I used them on my daughter’s Halloween-inspired birthday cake last year, and fell in love with their vibrant colors.
**NOTE** I actually used spirulina powder for the green but it turned out more gray than green for some reason, so I added some Color Kitchen yellow and blue, and voila, perfect Easter green!
I use a different method to create the shells for these eggs than most bakers would. Typically, the shells are filled and then dumped out to create a layer of chocolate inside the mold. That seems like extra mess to me, plus I was using 4 colors at once and didn’t want them getting mixed, so I “painted” the molds instead. Definitely use whatever method you prefer, I’m just sharing what I used.
Putting the nut butter in a piping bag makes filling the cups infinitely easier as well, and I highly recommend you do that. And because of the thickness of the nut butter after adding the sweetener, you may get little “tails” that stick up, but they can be easily flattened out and smoothed with a damp finger.
Check you shells!
After you’ve painted your egg shells, hold them up to a light source and check for bright spots. Those are thin areas that are prone to cracking or breaking when you unmold the eggs. Go back and fill them with a bit more chocolate and check again. Once you have a consistent thickness, you’re good to go.
Now that you have perfect shells and filled the eggs, top them with some of your remaining colored white chocolate and smooth out to reach all the way to the edges. Tap the mold on the counter to further smooth it out. If you have some extra space, I like to add a layer of semi-sweet chocolate before the final coating of the matching colored white chocolate.
Now pop those filled molds in the freezer to help them harden quickly and help them unmold much easier.
Once you’ve popped the chocolate eggs out of their mold, you’ll probably notice rough edges. You could leave them as-is, but I prefer to give them a little trim. Simply take a sharp paring knife (a smaller knife is much easier to control with the task) and run it along the edge of the eggs, removing the extras. Further smooth the edges with a quick swipe of your finger around the edges.
And that’s it! You’re done! It sounds like a long process, but once you’re actually in it, it goes pretty quick, especially by using the freezer to speed up the hardening process. And feel free to fill these with anything you can dream up. I’ve done caramel/nut butter as well as fluffernutter (so much yum!), and almost did strawberry jelly (for a PBJ taste) in these but ran out of time. There’s always next year…
Nut-Butter Filled Chocolate Eggs {naturally colored}
Ingredients
- High-Quality White Chocolate, or Lily's (for Keto)
- Plain Nut Butter, of your choice
- Honey, or Powdered Lakanto Monkfruit Sweetener (for Keto)
- Salt
- Natural Food Colors, like Color Kitchens
- Candy Molds, eggs, or any shape of your choice
- Clean, Unused Paint Brushes, preferably wide and flat
Instructions
White Chocolate Eggs
- If you're using this egg mold, use approximately 2/3 cup (80g) of white chocolate per color. In 30 second intervals, melt the chocolate in the microwave on High, stirring after each until the chocolate is completely smooth. This will take 3-4 cycles. Add a little bit of the natural food coloring to each bowl and stir until the color is completely incorporated. Add more color until you get the shade you want. For these shades, I used about 1/4-1/3 of each Color Kitchens pouch.
- Scoop up some of the colored white chocolate with your clean paintbrush and "paint" the insides of the egg mold cups. Keep it thick so the shells don't break easily when you remove them from the mold later. After you've painted them all, hold the mold up to a light source and see if you have any thin areas. If so, repaint them to make them thicker.
- Once the shells are dry and hardened, pipe in your nut butter filling (see below for my preferred recipe). If you wind up with points sticking up out of the nut butter, gently pat them down with a damp fingertip. Cover the filled eggs with more colored white chocolate and gently spread to the very edge, sealing in the nut butter. Tap the mold on the table gently to smooth the backs. Cool in the freezer until hardened, this will make them much easier to pop out of the mold.
Sweetened Nut Butter
- You can sweeten your nut butter to your liking but this is my preferred ratio:
- • 2/3 cup Nut Butter (plain, smooth, no added ingredients - if you make your own, that's even better - should be kind of runny)• 2-4 Tbsp Honey (4 is pretty sweet, start with 2 and work up from there if you think it needs it)•1/8 tsp Salt
- Stir everything together until you have a thickened nut butter. The honey will cause the runny nut butter to seize up a little (just like adding water to chocolate). This makes it much easier to pipe into the molds, as well as keeping it from oozing out once you bite into the chocolates.
- Transfer the nut butter to a piping bag (I like to fit mine with a large open tip for easier and ore accurate piping but it's not necessary). Cut off the tip and pipe into your prepared molds/shells.
Notes
- White chocolate is rarely pure paleo (most contain dairy). If you can't eat dairy, stick to the semi-sweet chocolate from Enjoy Life.