Make individualises decorated chocolate Easter eggs to give to that someone special.

I wanted to give my girlfriend something a bit more special then a cookie cutter Easter egg, so I thought of decorating a plain boring one.

What I leant from this is that it is very difficult to paint with chocolate, hence the reason you can observe that texture. I think it turned out alright, she was quite impressed. I have already had some experience with chocolate which you can read about in this instructable Custom made; shaped, flavoured and coloured chocolates.

Note that I am located in Perth, Western Australia. All my store locations are local and prices in Australian dollars.

Step 1: Ingredients & Equipment

Chocolate Easter egg - I chose to decorate an existing chocolate egg, mainly due to ease. But you can very easily also create the egg yourself from chocolate moulds. The egg I chose was a 100g Cadbury egg ($2.68) , I thought this size was large enough to paint while still looking elegant.

Cooking chocolate - you will need to buy white chocolate as this is the only type that can be mixed with the colouring powder. Preferable get the same brand of chocolate as the egg.

Colouring powders - these are what you add to white chocolate to make coloured chocolate. Quite essential for painting the egg. 8 Powder Colours (2g each) $12 for a set can be purchased from Choc Art.

Other items:
Paint brushes - two sizes, large one for the base coat, smaller for detail.
Cooking utensils - muffin pan, wok, spoon, cup. These items can be improvised with other items I will explain in the next step.
Clear plastic and ribbon - used for wrapping the finished egg.

Step 2: Melting and Preparing the Chocolate.

Chocolate requires very gentle heat to melt, this is achieved by simmering the chocolate melts over boiling water. A muffin pan was used to make handling the multiply colours easier, but separate cups/containers could be used. I used a wok to house the boiling water as this was the only pan large enough to hold the muffin pan.

In each section of the pan place some white chocolate melts and a very small amount of colouring powder. Mix these together, then add more powder if a more intense colour is required, it is better to use pastel colours for the base coat and then darken these for the details.

Step 3: Decorating the Egg.

This is the fun part. First paint the base colours with the thick brush. The trick when painting with melted chocolate is to use thick minimal strokes. This stops the hot melted chocolate from melting the cold egg and mixing the colours.

After you have applied one colour, let the chocolate set in the freezer for about 5 minutes. I found two coats are needed to cover all the initial brown milk chocolate.

After the base coats have been applied, in is time for some detail work with the thinner brush. It is a good idea to make the colours slightly darker with more colouring powder. Suggestions include adding lines and spots of complimentary colours.