Easter Fun!

So, yes, I am a ridiculously bad blogger.  You know, I look at all kinds of great blogs everywhere and realize that I will never be that organized.  

Today is May 1st and I am now ready to share with you my Easter creation!  

This is one of the panoramic eggs I made this year!  I'm a horrible photographer, but this one is light blue.  I made every part of this egg except the bunny rabbit - that I bought from Michaels, with my 40% off coupon.  This egg is 100% edible.

This is incredibly easy to do, just need a little time and patience.  Here's what I did:

For the egg - Mix 2 cups sugar, 4 tsp water and 1 tsp meringue powder.  If you want to color it, use either a bit of food coloring in the water.  You can use icing paste (gel) instead.  It should be the consistency of  damp sand - the kind you build sand castles with.  OOh, what a thought....may need to make a sugar castle next!

Smoosh (this is the official term...) the sugar mixture into an egg mold powdered with corn starch.  You want to pack it in as tightly as you can.  Wilton discontinued their plastic egg molds (why?) but you can find plastic eggs in either craft stores or Walmart (especially during Easter).

Once the sugar mixture is packed into both halves, even off the tops and invert onto a pan, or plate, or countertop, or wherever works best for you.  I put mine onto a piece of cardboard covered with baking paper.

Next, using a knife or piece of string (dental floss works great), cut into both egg halves at the pointy end, but leave the piece in place, like the picture below.  This will be the peep hole!

If your egg mold doesn't have a flat side for the bottom, cut one now.

Leave the eggs out for a couple of hours, or overnight.  The outside will harden, then you can pick them up and scrape away the insides.  The longer you let them dry the thicker the walls will be.  Work carefully, scraping the sugar away until you have it where you want it.  

Now for the fun!!

Royal icing - 3 Tbs meringue powder, 4 cups sifted confectioner's sugar (powdered sugar) and 6 TBs water.  Again - to color it use either icing paste of food coloring.  If using food coloring, add it into your water measurement.

Now to be totally honest, this makes a ginormous amount of royal icing.  I halved it with no weird results.

First, I made my decorations for inside and out:

I added apples and a knot hole with food edible markers.

Next I added grass inside the bottom half, loaded up the bunny rabbit, tree, carrots etc.  I put the two halves together with royal icing, then decorated the outside!  Viola!  Eggs done.  The royal icing takes a couple of hours to set up, but then your done.  BTW - did you know those royal icing decorations will last FOREVER!  I just put them in a plastic food thingy with a lid and I'll use them on cookies and such this spring and summer.