Ok am I a total fat kid, or have Cadbury Caramel Eggs gotten smaller?!
I could have sworn that they used to be colossal, delicious, primo chocolate vessels for my favoritest caramel* ever. I also could have sworn that they spanned more than part of the length of my dainty fingers. Do you remember them being much larger than this or am I dreaming?
*caramel that I haven’t made myself.
This week I got myself a box* of Cadbury Caramel Eggs so I could have a semblance of an Easter basket like I always had growing up. And just like when I was a kid, I tried to sneak a piece of chocolate before Easter. But when I opened the box and pulled out my caramel egg, I was... underwhelmed. I was expecting a Great Dane but I got a Pekinese.
*two boxes
So close.
But I suppose it isn’t all that bad. Candy sizes seem to be complimenting my waning mid 30’s metabolism, so at least there’s that. #SilverLining Yes, I said candy sizeS (plural) because I might have bought myself a bag of Reese’s peanut butter eggs and I felt the same thing about the size of those, too. #DefinitelyFatKid*
*have you noticed my ridiculous
shame notes over here yet?
Anyway, I do have memories tied to Easter that aren’t food-related. Not many, but a few. One is dying Easter Eggs* with my family. Each year we would try to go bigger and more creative than the last with crayon drawings on the pre-dyed eggs from that white wax crayon that came with the dye kits that you couldn’t see but only guessed at what you were writing. Then we would try to get deeper shades of the same 6 colors that we used every year by leaving the eggs in the dye for mind-numbing amounts of time (there were no cell phones to play on back then, so we had to… you know… talk to one another while we waited), and then when we pulled our eggs out of the dye, it was always a shock to see the white crayon monstrosity that I drew on the egg which I was just SO sure would be a masterpiece this time. But it was more like a scribble.
*Whoops, that’s a food.
Since I did not have the time to dye Easter eggs this year (I’m not even home for Easter) I decided to make a couple of cutesy eggs specifically for you to feast your eyes on. These little babies are Easter egg-shaped macarons filled with a soft no-bake cheesecake. To make them egg-stra* glamorous, I mixed together some purple sugar sprinkles and a pink/gold/white sprinkle medley and rolled the exposed edges in it.
*I’m sorry.
This is where my tip of the week comes in. When I first tried to dip my macarons in the sprinkles, the cookie sandwich was sliding all over the place and threatening to come apart! I couldn’t have that, so I knew I needed to firm up the center a bit. However, if you’ve ever tried to put sprinkles on frosting that has firmed up, you know it is next to useless.
So my tip is this - if your filling is too slippery, put your macarons in the freezer for maybe 10 minutes or so before dipping. They will still be soft and may slide just a tiny bit but the sprinkles will still be able to stick to the frosting and they will be much more manageable for dipping.
Happy Easter! And happy eating, y’all.