Chocolate Orange Easter Eggs
Chocolatey biscuits iced with royal icing and dusted with Menier's 100% Cocoa powder. Perfect to make with kids, or for an elegant Easter egg hunt!
Ingredients
For the biscuits
- 275 g plain flour
- 100 g self-raising flour
- 75 g Menier 100% Cocoa powder
- 125 g granulated sugar
- 125 g unsalted butter at room temperature, cubed
- 125 g golden syrup
- 1 large egg lightly beaten
- Zest 1 orange
For the icing
- 4 egg whites
- 900 g icing sugar sifted
- Food colourings of choice
Instructions
To make the biscuits
- Preheat your oven to 170C / 350F and line two baking trays with parchment paper.
- Sift the flours and cocoa powder together in a bowl and mix well.
- Add the cubed butter and rub into the flour between your fingertips until the mixture resembles bread crumbs.
- Make a well in the centre and add the egg and golden syrup.
- Zest your orange and add this to the dough.
- Mix well with a wooden spoon until it starts to clump and bind together, then use your hands to form a dough. N.B. Don't knead or overwork your dough otherwise your cookies will turn out tough!
- Roll your dough out on a piece of parchment paper, and using egg-shaped cookie cutters, cut eggs from the dough and place them on the prepared lined baking trays.
- Re-roll any scraps of dough and continue cutting out egg-shaped biscuits until all the dough is used up.
- Bake for 13-15 minutes then remove from the oven and leave to cool on the tray for 10 minutes.
- Remove from the tray and place on a wire rack to cool completely.
To make the icing
- Add your egg whites to the bowl of a stand mixer (or a large bowl if you don't have one) and sift in the icing sugar.
- Using your stand mixer (or an electric handheld whisk), whisk on a low speed until the icing sugar is incorporated. Add your food colouring of choice and whisk again until everything is even in colour.
- Set aside 1/3 of the icing and add an additional 50g of icing sugar (sifted) to this bowl. Mix well, to a thick paste – the consistency of toothpaste.
- Place this thicker icing into a piping bag and snip a tiny piece off the end. N.B. Make sure your biscuits are completely cool before starting to ice, otherwise your icing will melt!
- Pipe an outline around your cookie and then spoon the thinner into the centre, flooding your egg with icing.
- Using a pastry or paintbrush dipped into cocoa powder, flick little speckles all over your eggs and leave to dry completely.
- Hide for little hands to find, or serve as part of an Easter feast!