Vegan Creme Eggs

I have a lot of cousins, and my mum is one of 6 kids, so when I was little Easter was almost better than Christmas. Everyone in the family had to buy you chocolate, and lots of it. My particular little nuggets of Kryptonite were Cadbury’s Creme Eggs. I remember eating at least 5 of these once…and I definitely regretted it for about 2.6 minutes.

Fast forward to uni, and I told my family not to buy me chocolate for Easter. I had become aware by this point that such a spike in chocolate consumption was not good for me, and given that this was my first year of uni and I was living mainly on sweetcorn salads and Asda’s tinned beef stew, I was already on shaky ground. However, I did say that if they really had to buy me something, I would prefer Creme Eggs.

I ended up with about 70 of them.

I was giving packets of 6 away to my flatmates’ boyfriends, giving them to the homeless, and generally trying to get them out of the house before I crashed and ate all of them in one bloated, horrible but also fantastic afternoon. I probably ate about 20.

Going vegan, then, was a little bittersweet when I thought I would never chow down on a Creme Egg again. Then I realised; of course! I can make them myself!

This is actually WAY easier than I thought it would be. You’ll just have to invest in some egg moulds, which shouldn’t be too hard to find but I totally ran out of time and ended up getting some not-exactly-egg-shaped ones. The good news is that these can double for truffle moulds. Hooray!

You’ll need:

(Makes 10-15 eggs, depending on the size of the moulds)

300 grams vegan chocolate / chocolate chips

3 cups icing sugar

3 tbsp coconut milk

2 tbsp coconut oil + a little more

2 tsp vanilla extract

yellow and red food colouring

Method:

In a blender, or by hand, mix together the icing sugar, coconut milk, coconut oil and vanilla extract until it’s the same consistency as the inside of a Cadbury’s creme egg. Add more icing sugar if it’s too runny

Put 1/3 of the filling into a separate bowl, then add 4 drops yellow food colouring and 1 drop red and mix well

Add more yellow or red until it is your preferred tone – it should look like egg yolk!

Put both bowls in the freezer for at least an hour

Melt the chocolate in a double boiler / microwave and add in a dash of coconut oil

Coat the inside of the egg moulds with a thick layer of this melted chocolate then place them in the fridge. Remember that however many you do, you’ll end up with half this number of eggs (as each mould is one egg half)

There should be some melted chocolate left over

When they’re set, take the moulds out and re-melt the remaining chocolate if it started to set

Pop 1/2 the egg halves out of the moulds

Remove the fillings from the freezer

Take a small amount of the yellow filling and roll it into a ball. This should be easy after the freezing time

Take a slightly larger amount of the white filling and squish it flat

Roll the white filling around the yellow filling and place the ball into one of the egg moulds

Dip one of the removed egg halves into the melted chocolate so it coats the rim, then place this on top of the filled egg to make one full chocolate egg. Make sure the seal is well filled with melted chocolate

Repeat this step until all the eggs are filled, then place them (in the moulds) back into the fridge. Keep them in the fridge until you’re ready to eat them

Once they’re set, they’re ready to eat!

This sounds like a lot of steps but its actually easy, and would be a lot of fun to do with kids!

These taste more like the real Cabury’s Creme Eggs than you would think possible. They’re great to hand out to friends or even strangers on Easter Sunday, which I think I’m going to do right now. They’re also a great way to show that being vegan isn’t boring!

Tip: if you have filling left over, then wrap some white filling around some yellow filling, freeze it for a few hours then dip it in the melted chocolate. You’ll have little Creme Egg Pops that will go really well on top of Easter cupcakes!

These are not healthy by any stretch of the imagination – well, perhaps they’re healthy for the soul. Remember that moderation is key, and don’t take the actions of a greedy pre-teen me as a guide. Happy Easter!