I’m not a Vegan, but I do enjoy making / trying Vegan / Vegetarian things from time to time, in fact there is a section on the website that offers a veggie section. My friend Ash Frith tasked me with trying to make some homemade vegan versions, it sounded pretty fun to do. And also brought back memories of a very old recipe video of me making them in a very similar way. In fact this recipe is almost identical! I went to a medium sized supermarket and was able to get most of the items I needed to make this vegan!
I think with both these and the non-vegan ones i’ve made previously they both follow the same rule – you have to keep them cold. If you are not bothered about them looking like eggs and don’t mind egg halves, do yourself a favour and line the moulds with chocolate, fridge it to firm it, fill it with the white and yellow filling we make below, set it and drench in chocolate, these will be very simple, less messy, and still half an egg!
BUT!!! If you want to try this, this is what you gotta do….
First up we make the filling. Get a large mixing bowl for this and a smaller one to the side. Combine the golden syrup, vegan butter and vanilla extract (or use another extract if you wish!). It may be a bit tough at first but beat together until merged. Carefully add in the icing sugar and mix really well, you want to get it nice and smooth. Take about a sixth of the icing out of the bowl and put it in the smaller bowl, add the orange food dye to the smaller bowl. Cover both bowls and chill in the fridge for a good 60 minutes if you can, this will help massively when first setting them.
Now this is where it can get messy, if you have some sort of egg shaped mould it can help to give it an initial bit of structure, but the freezer will be your friend! Remember if any of the mixture gets too soft you can add more icing sugar, but you want it to be gooey when at room temperature which is why keeping it cold is vital.
Take the orange bowl first of all and grab small blobs rolling them into orange sized balls. Put them back in the freezer to hold their shape. Check again after 15 minutes or so and re-shape if needed.
For the white icing grab larger amounts, roll up into a larger ball (dusting hands with icing sugar can help prevent sticking!)…. flatten slightly with your hand and place one orange ball from the freezer into the centre of it. Quickly roll up the white icing to seal in the orange yolk icing centre, don’t worry if the first roll is a bit rough, just get the yolk in there and get it back in the freezer. Repeat with remaining dough, in fact, if you can leave the remaining white icing chilling whilst working one at a time that is the best way.
Repeat these steps and re-shape if needed, keeping them cool.
Melt the chocolate in a large bowl over a pan of just simmering water ensuring the water is not touching the bowl. Stand to one side to room temperature and then transfer to a tall thin glass, ideal for dunking! Insert a bamboo skewer into the egg shapes and dab a little melted chocolate onto the sticks where they hold the egg, this will help keep them in place, so return to the freezer to set.
With the chocolate cooled, but still gooey, one at a time dunk a chilled egg shape into the glass of melted chocolate fully coating it, then lift up and allow any excess to drip for 10 seconds or so. With the eggs being cold, the chocolate will set pretty quick. When safe to do so, transfer to the fridge for the chocolate to fully set and repeat with remaining eggs.
I prefer eating these cold and chilled, they taste fresher that way. But if you want you can have them at room temperature, that way the egg filling is gooey and will spill out like a classic creme egg!
This recipe is fun, but also very much trial and error. Work efficiently on it, don’t make the filling too thick, and you’ll keep coming back to this one! Enjoy!