Here's an easy way to make breakfast eggs more fun!

These fried egg moulds are made from 0.5mm mirror polished stainless steel. At less than £1 each to make I think they were pretty cheap. They were also a lot of fun to make and the possibilities for designs are almost endless.

I made a star, a heart and a Land Rover Defender (vrrrrrrrrrrrm!). You could also make some eggciting ninja eggs, or even android or instructables robot eggs! All using the same method documented below.

A note on spelling: I'm British, so I apologise, you will have to put up with our penchant for adding a U to the middle of as many words as we can. You might know these better as molds.

Step 1: Tools, Materials, Ingredients & Equipment

Tools: (selection of)

steel ruler
clamps
tin snips
whiteboard pens
hammer

Materials:

strips of 0.5mm stainless steel, 500mm long

Ingredients:

eggs!
bread for toasting

Equipment:

frying spatula
frying pan (not your best one)
tongs
egg moulds!

Step 2: Choosing Shapes

Your choice of shapes for making moulds should be limited to those that are quite simple. Complex curves and lots of sharp corners are tricky.

Download those included in this step, or create your own using the custom shapes in Microsoft Word or by roughly tracing around the outline of a picture in Photoshop or Gimp. For the Land Rover mould I found a side-on image of a Land Rover I liked then traced around it in another layer. Once I'd drawn the outline, I deleted the base layer, leaving me with the outline.

Step 3: Print the Outline

Print your chosen outlines to A4 paper.

Mine are about 10cm x 10cm.

Step 4: Follow the Lines

Now you have your outlines, pick a straight part of the cutter to start with. Joining the two ends once you're finished will be easier on a straight bit.

Before starting, remember to sand the edges of the steel strips. If you don't you'll cut yourself like I did.

So once you've picked your starting place, use a dry wipe marker to mark where you want to bend the steel, then take it away to make a nice clean sharp bend or rounded curve.

The following few steps show a few tricks to make it easier and neater.

Step 5: Sharp Bends

Being able to achieve a nice sharp bend gives the moulds much better detail when finished. I found this the easiest way...

Clamp one end of a steel ruler to a table or work bench.

Slip the part to be bend under the steel ruler.

Clamp the other end of the ruler. One of the single squeeze quick release clamps works great here, you don't need massive holding power, and it would be a pain to keep tightening and loosening a traditional clamp.

With the steel part positioned correctly, bend up against the ruler. The clamped ruler will keep the part in place and provide a nice stiff, straight, sharp etch to bend the steel of the mould against.

You can do this on the front or far side of the ruler, which ever is easiest. The pictures below show me doing both.

Step 6: Curves

Getting neat curves freehand is HARD.

I found that bending it around something helps a lot.

Find something slightly smaller than the curve to be bend, this way when the steel springs back a bit after you've bent it it will be the right size.

If the object you're forming your steel around is long and narrow, like a pen, holding it in a vice helps a lot and leaves you both hands free to bend the steel with.

Step 7: Cut Then Weld/glue/rivet

It's important at this stage to get your moulds as flat as possible. Your strips may not be absolutely parallel, or in the process of bending them they might have come out of alignment slightly.

Press them down on a flat surface so that one edge of your mould lies on it all around.

Clamp firmly to hold it until you've welded it.

I used a spot welder on its lowest setting. Once I'd shot it once, I removed the clamp and zapped it a couple more times for good luck. I then repeated this for all three of my moulds.

Not got a spot welder? An epoxy glue like araldite might do the job, or a rivet which might be trickier to align nicely but would definitely be more food safe and tolerant of the heat in a pan.

Step 8: Fry Those Eggs!

Now for the fun bit.

Gather your weapons. You'll need a spatula, some tongs to lift the hot egg moulds afterwards and a frying pan, the flatter the better. Remember not to use your wife's/partner's/mum's/dad's best one, I didn't scratch my pan, but then I wasn't so bothered since it's already pretty battered.

Run a bit of your preference of oil around the inside of each of the egg moulds, then place in the pan. Slosh a teaspoon more oil in to each and put over a medium high heat.

When hot, crack an egg and start to pour slowly into the egg mould. By doing it slowly the white of the egg in contact with the pan will start cooking before the whole off the egg is in, and it won't run out as much as mine did! (It didn't help that the bottom of my pan was almost dome shaped).

If your eggs do start to leg it off around your pan, scrape the leaked white up and dump it back inside the mould.

Now is a good time to pop the toast in the toaster.

Step 9: Eggstraction (& Apologies )

To extract (yes, that IS extract not eggstract, we've had that pun already) your eggies from their steel shells, lift them from the pan with a pair of kitchen tongs and run a knife around the inside while holding them over a plate of delicious buttered toast. They should fall straight out!

Enjoy!

(Just a quick apology for all of the bad egg yolks (bwua ha haaaa), I'm sure I missed some good opportunities so feel free to point them out below.)