Yeah, I don't think of fluorescent, bouncy eggs when I think of Easter either, but since it was Easter during coronavirus lockdown, there wasn't much else to do, so I decided to give it a shot. These eggs would best be done with a variety of Jell-O flavors, especially lighter-colored ones like lemon or orange, but I went with strawberry since it's such a spring-appropriate flavor.
This recipe initially made me a little...nervous. First of all, I have never "blown out" the innards of an egg before, but even worse, the recipe mentions nothing about cooking the eggshells before pouring the gelatin into them. I know Americans can be a little paranoid about egg safety, but I really didn't want to take any risks, so I boiled the empty shells for six or seven minutes before using them. If you wanted to avoid real egg shells altogether, you could easily modify a plastic Easter egg for molding purposes.
For reference, I left the narrow (or "top") end of the egg completely closed and opened a 3/4" aperture in the bottom, wider end. This allowed me to kind of poke a finger into the egg to loosen the white and yolk from the shell to extract them. I figured it was better to leave the top end intact since that's the one that you're going to pay more attention to, so you want it to be as smooth and rounded as possible. It turns out that I was a bit mistaken on this point. But we'll get back to that later.
Other than preparing the eggs, this recipe is about as standard as it can be. To make sure that the eggs were plenty firm, I added an extra tablespoon of unflavored gelatin to the Jell-O. I used a funnel to get the Jell-O into the eggs, and stood them up in a tiny saucepan so that they would stay upright. I didn't want to use the egg carton for this because the exterior of the eggs is what can carry pathogens, and even though the eggs had been sterilized, putting them back into the carton and later breaking open the shells could lead to said pathogens getting onto the Jell-O. Jell-O is great, but throwing it up is not, so I made do sans egg carton. If you had a cardboard egg carton, you could probably bake the carton for a bit to make it safe to use for molding, however.
I know it looks like these eggs have suffered some serious wounds, but I promise no eggs were harmed in the making of this Jell-O other than in the way they are normally harmed!
There was just a bit of Jell-O mixture left over after filling eight eggs, so I did this with our cool Beretta-themed ice cube tray. They didn't unmold very well, unfortunately, but it was worth a shot.
After setting up nice and firm, I went about the daunting task of unmolding the eggs. Surely it can't be any different than peeling a hard-boiled egg, right? Well, I dipped each egg into warm water for several seconds, but afterwards I found it very difficult to keep the eggs from ripping apart at the edges during the unmolding. It seems like I needed even more gelatin than what I added. I also believe it would be very helpful to spray the inside of each egg with cooking spray before adding the Jell-O, as well as to allow the gelatin mixture to thicken up just slightly before adding it to the shells, though not so much to where it would struggle to get through the funnel.
These are easily the nicest-looking eggs I got out of the deal, though they aren't perfect, but all of them had a slight white patch at the top. This would be one advantage of molding the eggs right side up: the white patch would, I'm guessing, stay at the bottom of the egg. I have no idea what that is or why it's there, though. It was actually embedded in the gelatin of each egg, too, so it couldn't really be removed.
The other advantage of molding the eggs right side up is that it seemed far easier to me to get the parts of the egg near the opening peeled cleanly as compared to the last part of each egg, so if you want the top end of the egg to look smooth, it would probably be easier to start at the top.
There is clearly not much to say about the taste of these eggs. They taste like Jell-O. They do look quite festive, though, especially nestled in the tinted coconut. The other way I served these was in the middle of a circle of the cookies I topped with the coconut. Don't they look nice?
When I constructed this plate, my husband told me that this was the first Jell-O recipe I have made that truly looks fancy, "Like a dessert you'd get at a restaurant that serves multiple-course meals." I think that means I've truly made it as a Jell-O artist.
In terms of criticisms of this recipe, all I have to say is that the eggs should really have been made with a Bavarian-type recipe that would result in a pastel color. Easter eggs that aren't in pastels are just offputting in some small way. It doesn't matter much, but your brain just doesn't recognize that they are for Easter. The addition of some whipped cream, or maybe a little sweetened condensed milk, would do wonders for the aesthetics of the recipe. The other major improvement needed here is, as I mentioned, more gelatin or less water to help the eggs keep their form when peeled.
With those two adjustments made, though, this would really make a fabulous treat for a big group of kids on Easter Sunday, because I have always thought there is something wrong with the fact that pastel-dyed Easter eggs aren't sweet, and this recipe could be the solution to that.
If you were wondering, I used all the eggs from these shells to make a spinach and cheese frittata, which would make a perfect Easter brunch to avoid sugar overload.
Thanks, as always, to General Foods for giving us yet another excuse to inject more Jell-O into our lives!
