Forget that the house isn’t decorated, and we haven’t dyed a single egg yet…and then there’s the girls Easter dresses that I havne’t even started, and yes Easter is only a week away…
…Rather than do any of that, we decided to try something new and make candy eggs yesterday.
This is a simple project, but definitely not quick. In fact, we actually only got about one-third of the eggs completely finished yesterday. There’s about 70 more left to dip in chocolate today. But it is alot of fun for the kids, and the eggs are very tasty and much much cheaper than store bought candy eggs.
To start, you only need a few simple ingredients.
1/2 cup (1 stick) Butter
1 8oz. package of Cream Cheese
1 1/2 cups of Creamy Peanut Butter (about 1container)
2 pounds of Powdered Sugar (yes 2 whole pounds…it is candy after all)
1 1/2 tsp. Vanilla Extract
1/2 tsp. Salt
24 oz Milk Chocolate or Semi Sweet Chocolate (for dark chocolate eggs) Chips
Mix the softened butter and cream cheese together in a large bowl. Add about half of the confectionary sugar one cup at a time then add the peanut butter, vanilla and salt. Mix well and then with a wooden spoon (and then your hands), mix in the rest of the powdered sugar one cup at a time.
Place the mixture in the refrigerator or freezer to harden the dough.
Form the peanut butter mixture into egg shapes (the dough is very easy to work with and not sticky) and place on a cookie sheet lined with wax paper. Then refrigerate again for at least an hour.
Melt the chocolate in the microwave, adding a bit of shortening if it needs to be thinned. Dip the eggs about two thirds into the chocolate then spread the chocolate over the rest of the egg with a knife so that the chocolate coating is not too thick.
Place the finished eggs back on the wax paper till the chocolate has hardened.
Store in an airtight container and try not to eat too many at once.
The kids really enjoyed making these, and were thrilled to find out they could make their own candy. They’re even more thrilled that there are now about 100 peanut butter eggs in the house for consumption.
For cute (and inexpensive/green) packaging wrap each of 12 eggs in a small piece of plastic wrap and place them in an egg carton. Tie the egg carton with a big bow.