Why spend up to £10 to buy an Easter egg that may have very little chocolate in it, when you can mould your own at half the price, and have the bonus of giving a personalised gift?!

I had grown up with the notion that to create Easter eggs, you had to melt chocolate and brush it in layers into the mould, building it up over time to a descent thickness. Although a great little hobby project for creating a handful of eggs, this just takes far too long if you want to create a large number of them. It also isn't nearly as adventurous as I would like!

To complete this project, you will need...
Chocolate (well duh!)
Cadbury mini eggs (for the dotty effect)
An Easter egg mould
3 Elastic bands
Selotape
A K'Nex Roto moulding machine (see my instructable of how to build one of these here)

Step 1: Build the Machine

This one is fairly self explanatory - in order to roto-mould your Easter eggs, you will need to build the roto-moulding machine. The full instructions for this are on another of my instructables, or you could build your own machine!
The basic principle is simple; the machine spins the mould in all directions, causing the melted material inside to be washed around the outside until it coats it. Magic!

Step 2: Melt the Chocolate

I managed to purchase the moulds for about 99 pence in a stationary store in the UK, but you can easily get them on eBay or craft shops online.
Now you get to choose your chocolate. Depending on how much money you want to spend, you can vary what quality chocolate you buy. In the end, despite the photo, we bulk bought a pile of cadbury's dairy milk from costco to make ours.
Pop it in the microwave to melt it, but be careful not to burn it!

Step 3: Crush the Mini Eggs

To create the 'speckled' effect of the eggs and to give it an extra texture, we bought mini eggs and crushed them in the bag with a rolling pin. We then mixed these into the melted chocolate!

Step 4: Fill the Mould

I can't tell you how much chocolate you need per egg, because it will vary depending on your mould size. What I can say though is that after a lot of experimentation (oh the shame of having to eat the failures!), we found that filling one side to about 2/3 full seemed to give a good thickness.
Once you have melted the chocolate, you are literally against the clock, so make sure you are quick getting it in (and have the moulds ready to go).
We already had one side of the mould taped up to save time here.

Step 5: Tape Up the Edges

Tape along the edges of the mould to prevent the chocolate from leaking out - unless of course you like chocolate on your carpet...

Step 6: Strap to the Machine

Using three elastic bands, strap the mould with the chocolatey goodness to the centre of the roto moulder. Now switch it on and watch it run! It is worth checking the batteries before you even melt the chocolate, just as it can be quite heavy, and it may need a bit of a push to get it running smoothly at first!

We would generally leave ours for about ten minutes to make sure it is coated well on the inside.

Step 7: Shove in the Freezer

Another part where speed is important!
When you are happy that it is well coated, take the Easter egg and shove it in the freezer as soon as possible, giving it about 30 mins to cool. This will make sure that the chocolate doesn't all seep to one side of the egg (see the picture of a failed one!).

Step 8: Remove From Mould

Now you can take the eggs from the moulds and put them in the fridge to keep. We found that ramekins work very well for holding them until you decorate them!

Normal icing pens work well for decoration, and with a small amount of cellophane you can make the eggs look very pretty indeed.