It’s time to think about the Easter dessert. Personally, I found mine, and it will be a Paris-Brest. Certainly P. Conticini’s recipe…
But this weekend, I wanted to have a little fun with my egg molds, you know, the ones I bought a while ago to make this cake. I prepared a few chocolate shells, without really having a clear idea of what I was going to do with them.
Finally, I imagined an Easter egg that we could serve as a dessert. The result is really nice, both visually and tasting. For this recipe, I actually cheated a bit, because I used leftovers that were in my freezer. The cake is a hazelnut sponge cake like this one. I had cooked a little dough that I had too much in a small mold. Sometimes it helps to have that kind of stuff in the freezer. The creamy caramel was also frozen from a Yule log made at Christmas.
I added Cara Crakine and a whipped dark chocolate ganache. As most of my preparations were ready, this dessert was made very quickly. It will necessarily take a little longer if everything has to be done.
In any case, we loved it, and I wouldn’t hesitate to make this dessert again.
Finally, the most delicate part remains the chocolate shells. It is essential to temper the chocolate to have shiny and especially brittle shells. There is nothing complicated in that, and I refer you to the article I had dedicated to the tempering of chocolate. The easiest way is to use cocoa butter. It’s almost child’s play.
Chocolate Eggs for Easter Dessert:
Hulls:
100g dark chocolate (for couverture)
1 g of mycryo
Melt the chocolate in 30 second increments in the microwave.
Mix well and bring the temperature down to 35°C.
Add the Mycryo and mix well until it reaches 32°C.
Then distribute the chocolate in the molds using the back of a spoon.
Allow to harden at room temperature and do not unmold.
Hazelnut sponge cake:
2 yolks eggs
2 blanks eggs
Preheat the oven to 200°C.
Place the eggs, the yolks, the hazelnut powder and the 90 g of sugar in a mixing bowl and whisk for about ten minutes.
Beating egg whites.
Gradually add the remaining sugar.
Add the meringue to the first mixture, delicately, with a spatula.
Sift the flour over the mixture and fold it in, always gently.
Bake the dough in a large greased pan or in small greased 15 cm pans.
Count between 10 and 20 minutes of cooking depending on the size.
Creamy caramel:
Chocolate whipped ganache:
Assembly:
Cara Crakine (here)
Easter eggs
Cut the sponge cake to put it at the bottom of the shells.
Cover with a spoonful of Cara Crakine.
Add creamy caramel and cover with whipped ganache.
Smooth, then decorate.
Unmold and refrigerate.
To finish: there are plenty of ways to garnish chocolate shells. These can also be made with milk or white chocolate.
For the cake, you can use slices of cake or even commercial spoon biscuits.
The Cara Crakine can be replaced by a crispy praline/gavottes. You could also use candied fruit.
The cream can be made with chocolate, coffee, praline… You could also use a spread.
And the whipped ganache can also be declined with milk, white or even praline chocolate.
There are many possibilities…
My molds are Silikomart. There are egg-shaped molds in other brands. The good thing about these is that they are large enough to make a just the right size dessert. The downside is that there are only 5.