With Easter fast approaching, shops are abuzz with Cadbury's creamed eggs and other chocolate treats, though if you're anything like us, you can't wait for Easter Sunday to treat yourself.
But have you ever considered wrapping your creamy eggs in batter and cooking them in an air fryer? It's a trend started by the Boredoflunch Instagram account and has since gone viral.
Our mouths were watering after watching the video: you definitely have to eat a pain au chocolat in the morning to take it to the next level. So we decided to give it a try… after all, the Instagram Reel makes the recipe as easy as it is delicious.
It is not as easy as it looks
The recipe only calls for two ingredients besides the egg custard: a pre-made croissant dough and a beaten egg. To get started, open the tube of pre-made dough, which you can buy at most grocery stores, and roll it up—our dough had perforations that made it easy to cut into evenly sized triangles.
Next, unwrap the creamed egg and wrap it with one of the dough triangles. Then brush the top of the batter with beaten egg, set your deep fryer to 338F/170C and cook for eight minutes. When baked, the dough should be crispy and the chocolate and fondant from the egg should ooze out as you cut.
However, that was not the case for us. The crust was evenly browned on top, but the sides and bottom weren't because we hadn't turned the egg halfway through cooking (more on that below). The egg was also stuck to the crisp plate of our fryer, and when we managed to dislodge it, we discovered that some of the coating had escaped during cooking, creating a sticky mess. And when we cut our creation, we discovered that some of the dough was not fully baked.
It was certainly a setback, but at this point our craving for sweet, chocolate-filled cakes simply needed to be satisfied, so we decided to stick with the recipe and use our previous experience experimenting with an air fryer, in particular using a deep fryer. air. deep fryer to create fried chicken to compete with KFC, and found we could make Krispy Kreme-style donuts in a deep fryer; we adjusted the process to (hopefully) give a better result...
1. Use parchment paper in the fryer
As we mentioned, our first attempt at a croissant-wrapped custard egg stuck to the vegetable plate, which left us with a mess to clean up, but more importantly, it meant that when we tried to remove the egg, some of the delicate dough was removed from the chocolate. , allowing the chocolate and fondant coating to spill out; we're all for oozing chocolate, but we prefer it oozing after we pull it out of our fryer.
To avoid this, we place a small square of parchment paper under the egg to prevent it from sticking. We used a similar trick when making french toast in a deep fryer, which kept the french toast from sticking and made it easier to clean the vegetable dish, so it made sense to do the same here.
We made sure the parchment paper was only slightly larger than the egg so it wouldn't cover too many holes in the vegetable pan; these are key to the air frying process as they allow hot air to circulate around the cooking cavity.
2. Turn up the heat
Boredoflunch recommends a cook temperature of 338F/170C and a cook time of eight minutes. Although we didn't have any issues with the weather, we thought the suggested temperature seemed a bit low, but since we never want to question a cook's recipe, we went ahead. However, after our first try, we were convinced that our intuition was correct.
Over the past year, our mission has been to discover the best things to cook in an air fryer, moving on to everything from French fries to cinnamon rolls, and one thing we've learned is that as a general rule of thumb, the temperature required to cook a dish in a standard oven is roughly what you should use with the fryer.
The baking instructions for the croissant dough suggested 356F/180C, so we increased the temperature for our second try, in an effort to make sure the croissant dough was fully cooked and we had a flaky, crispy dough instead of a sticky dough.
3. Make sure the egg is evenly covered with batter (and flip the egg over)
One thing Boredoflunch doesn't stress is that the batter surrounding the custarded egg should be an even thickness all the way around, which will help ensure even cooking. So we spent a few more minutes smoothing the dough out until it seemed to be the same thickness around the egg.
Many air fryers, including the Instant Vortex Plus, which currently tops our list of the best air fryers you can buy, have a "shake reminder" feature. This provides an audible and, in some cases, a visual alert, telling you to remove the fry basket and shake or turn the food halfway through cooking to ensure it cooks evenly.
Boredoflunch doesn't mention whether it's necessary to flip the egg, but we decided that would probably help, and certainly couldn't hurt.
We love all things caramel and in our opinion there is nothing better than mixing it with chocolate, and with nine million Cadbury Caramel bars sold each year in the UK we are clearly not alone. So, in addition to wrapping an egg with cream in croissant dough, we did the same with a Cadbury caramel egg.
After changing the cooking process, all that remained was frying…
Verdict
After the cook time was up (and after flipping the eggs halfway through), we opened the air fryer drawer and were pleased with what we found. Both eggs were evenly browned and the fat allowed us to easily remove them from the fryer.
Then came the moment of truth: we sliced the eggs and it was clear that the batter was cooked through, with crisp, flaky layers, while the filling oozed out like lava flowing from a volcano of chocolate and fondant.
And so on until the all-important taste test. In our opinion, the Creme Egg version is a bit too sickly, and half of one was more than enough. The Cadbury Caramel Egg version, on the other hand, was the perfect blend of sweetness and creaminess for our taste buds.
You may want to modify the process on your own and adjust the cook time and temperature for your particular air fryer, and in our opinion the results are well worth a little trial and error. If you want to satisfy your chocolate egg cravings in a slightly different way and create an irresistible Easter treat, look no further.
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