How to make ice cream Creme Eggs

Attention Creme Egg lovers: You can now make your own ice cream version of everyone’s favourite Easter treat at home — and it’s super easy.

Every Easter seems to bring with it a new iteration of everyone’s favourite seasonal confectionary: The Creme Egg.

Where once we could only buy the eggs themselves, we can now spend Easter (and the months leading up to it) indulging in mini Creme Eggs, the Creme Egg McFlurry and the Creme Egg chocolate block.

A few years ago we put together a few of our own Creme Egg hacks, including a Creme Egg-filled doughnut that we still wake up thinking about.

This year we’re stepping back into the kitchen to create our own (surprisingly easy) Creme Egg-esque dessert using simple supermarket ingredients. The most exciting thing? These eggs are filled with ice cream.

It’s the perfect dessert to wrap-up an Easter lunch, whether you serve individual eggs for each person, or a giant ice cream-filled egg shattered in the middle of the table that everyone attacks with their own spoon.

A smashing Easter dessert (sorry). Picture: Tristan Lutze

It’s versatile too. We’ve used caramel sauce for the yolk, but fruit puree, chocolate syrup, dulce de leche, jam, peanut butter or any other thick, sweet liquid works just as well. The flavour of ice cream and type of chocolate you use for the egg is up to you too.

So make some room in the freezer, pull the Easter egg moulds out of the back of the cupboard and stay a few hops ahead of the Easter bunny by making your own ice cream-filled Creme Eggs.

ICE CREAM CREME EGGS

INGREDIENTS:

Milk, dark or white chocolate ‘melts’

Vanilla ice cream (or your favourite flavour)

Caramel sauce (fruit puree, chocolate syrup, jam, peanut butter and dulce de leche also work well)

METHOD:

1. Pour chocolate melts into a nonmetal bowl and microwave on the medium heat setting for 30 seconds. Stir with a rubber spatula and heat for a further 30 seconds, then stir again. Repeat until chocolate has completely melted.

2. Pour chocolate into Easter egg moulds until full. Refrigerate chocolate-filled moulds for five minutes, or until a few millimetres around the edge of the chocolate has begun to change colour and set.

3. Pour out excess chocolate, then return the mould to the fridge. It should now have a thin chocolate shell, around 2-3mm thick, all around it. Keep chilling until completely set.

It's important to ensure the egg shells aren't too thick or too thin. Picture: Tristan Lutze

4. Remove ice cream from freezer a few minutes before you plan to use it to allow it to soften. Spoon ice cream into chocolate shells (which are still in the moulds), then use the back of a knife or a spatula to smooth the top surface until flat.

5. Using the underside of a measuring spoon, press a divot into the ice cream. Your egg should look like a halved avocado with the seed removed.

6. Pour caramel sauce (or other filling) into the cavity you just made, then put filled moulds in the freezer, taking care to keep them level so the sauce stays in the hole.

We've used caramel sauce for the 'yolk' but you can use jam, syrup or anything you want. Picture: Tristan Lutze

7. After a couple of hours, take filled shells from the freezer and press together to make a whole egg. Return to freezer until needed, then simply remove the moulds and serve.

It looks unassuming from the outside. Picture: Tristan Lutze

Tristan Lutze is a food writer and photographer. Follow him on Instagram or Facebook.