Barfi Easter Eggs on Chocolate Cornflakes Nests

I have lots of fond memories of Easter when I was young because we would go away for short breaks to lake Malawi. Then when we moved to Birmingham from Malawi, Easter would mean coming over to London to visit relatives. All of us getting together, keeping in touch and having wonderful food, with lots of chocolate of course!! So exchanging easter eggs became a new tradition for us. After the initial binging on the easter eggs we would find creative ways of using the remaining chocolate.

Recently we went visiting relatives and in a conversation we were having, as the children were given easter eggs, was – “how much we pay for a hollow egg – just chocolate !  It should be filled ??!!”. My cousin (Raju) and I were talking about it and she mentioned a conversation she had with her son Rushil about how to make a filled easter egg. So this recipe is his patent idea! I loved his idea of making pistachio barfi and then coating it with chocolate. As I got thinking about it more, I thought let me give his idea a go and this year give everyone home made easter eggs. So I made orange flavoured barfi then coated them with chocolate and placed them on crunchy nests made with chocolate covered cornflakes. The result – wonderful fun thing to do with children over easter and the taste match made in heaven – orange and chocolate 🙂

I used the same basic recipe of barfi that I made before here, and used cooking and milk chocolate. Having made it I think in the future I will experiment with the chocolate and perhaps use a plain or dark chocolate. I did everything by hand, but if you have moulds then you will get a more professional finish.

Ingredients

Preparation time: 45 mins          Cooking time: 20 mins         Makes: roughly 50 eggs

450 g of milk powder

225 g sugar

3 tbsp ghee (clarified butter)

10 serving spoons milk

4 tbsp dried orange zest

3 tbsp orange essence

200 g milk chocolate melted

100 g plain cooking chocolate melted

140 g cornflakes

Method

To make the barfi eggs

1) Put the sugar in a pan and add just enough cold water to cover the sugar and heat up.  Add the orange zest and essense, let the mixture boil so that the whole surface is covered with bubbles. While that is cooking, in a large bowl mix the milk powder, ghee and milk to crumble consistency.

2) Let the sugar and water mix for a minute or so after the entire area is covered with bubbles, remove from the heat and add it to the milk powder mixture and mix it thoroughly.  It should become a soft dough.

3) Once the dough is ready shape into different sized egg shapes. Leave it for a few hours until it sets. You may need to put it in the fridge to help it set.

4) In the mean time melt the chocolate in a bowl over some simmering water. Stir to ensure there are no lumps, if they do occur then add some butter or oil to the chocolate and stir it in until smooth.

5) Once the barfi is solid enough, place them one at a time in the melted chocolate, and remove with a fork.  Shake off the excess chocolate and place on baking tray lined with grease proof paper. Refrigerate to let it set.

To make the Cornflakes nests

6) Place the cornflakes in the remaining melted chocolate, mix until all the cornflakes are covered.

7) To create nest shapes, fill some muffin cases with the chocolate covered cornflakes leaving a dip in middle which will aleter be filled with the barfi eggs. Leave to set for a few hours.

8) After everything is set you are ready to place the eggs in the nests and share with everyone, enjoy 🙂