Cadbury Creme Salade Nicoise

Right here, right now, I'd like to give you permission to Cadbury Creme-ify your salad. 

Easter is coming, and Spring makes everyone excited about fresh produce. Well, you can share your excitement about vegetables, while not actually consuming any, with this totally sweet salad. Green tinted coconut acts as a bed upon which "tomatoes" of red candy, "olives" of black jelly beans, and a drizzle of chocolate as "vinaigrette". Since the signature aspect of the Niçoise salad is hard boiled egg, this indulgent version is topped with slivers of Cadbury Creme Egg. 

If anyone asks why it doesn't have tuna, well, I don't really like it on salad, so there you go.

Just don't eat too much, because you don't want to ruin your appetite for dessert! 

Here's how you do it. 

Cadbury Creme Salade Niçoise 

Makes 1

• Approximately 1/2 cup coconut, tinted green (I used wide flakes)
• 3-4 red hard candies
• 6-8 black jelly beans
• One Cadbury Creme Egg
• Melted chocolate, for drizzling

Procedure

1. Place the Creme Egg in the fridge for about 15 minutes. This will firm it up for when you cut it.
2. Meanwhile, place the green tinted coconut on an appropriately sized plate.
3. Place the red candies and jelly beans in regular intervals over the top of the "lettuce".
4. Once the Creme Egg has chilled, slice it into 4-5 coins and place them on the salad.
5. Drizzle with melted chocolate, and serve. 

If you enjoyed this, you may also enjoy my tutorial on how to make a candy salad.

Happy Easter!

Cadbury Creme Egg Rolls

Calm down. They're just Cadbury Creme Egg Rolls.

WAIT. CADBURY CREME EGG ROLLS!?! I AM A GENIUS. 

I know, all caps are annoying. But in the case of the last series of words, it was necessary. Because Easter has come early this year with my tastiest Creme Egg creation yet: Cadbury Creme Egg Rolls. 

I've delved into Asian-meets-Creme-Egg fusion before, with my Cadbury Creme Egg Foo Young recipe from a few years ago. I've also re-created many specimens of classic cuisine with a sweet twist, including Cadbury Creme Egg Salad, Cadbury Creme Deviled Eggs, Cadbury Creme Eggs Benedict, Cadbury Creme Scotch Eggs, and of course, Cadbury Creme Egg in Hole Toast. 

But these? These are special. Because they are fried, can be served with sauce, it's true, but mostly because, well, just look at them. 

The best news is that if you want to make Cadbury Creme Egg Rolls, you don't need a lot of time or ingredients. Really. Let me tell you how.

First, you'll grab four Cadbury Creme eggs, a tube of pop-n-bake crescent rolls, and some flaked coconut. You'll rustle up a large pan and put a bunch of oil in it. 

Then, you'll engage in a montage (80s music encouraged) involving these steps to assemble your egg rolls (don't worry, the full recipe is below).

Once you've done that, you'll heat up the oil and get your egg roll tossin' hands ready*... 

(* = don't actually toss. Gently place them in the oil. Don't ruin your pretty face with hot oil spatter, please.) 

and fry them to golden perfection. Let them cool slightly then enjoy the gooey rewards contained within. 

Cadbury Creme Egg Rolls

• 4 Cadbury Creme Eggs
• Flaked coconut (half a cup or so)
• 8 crescent rolls from a package

 Procedure

1. Put the Creme Eggs in the freezer for about 10 minutes. This will help them become firm when you chop them in a bit.
2. Unroll the crescent rolls, and divide into 8 perforated portions. Ignore the triangle shape, and mush each one into a ball. 
3. Using a rolling pin, roll the dough as thin as it will go without seeming like it will break. 
4. Place some coconut on top of the rolled dough. 
5. Your Creme eggs are ready about now, I'd say. Take them out of the fridge, and cut each egg in half. You now have 8 portions. 
6. Cut each portion coarsely, and put it along the coconut on the spread crescent dough. 
7. Roll it up, burrito-style. Here's how:
8. Heat up the oil. Once you think it's hot, test it by tossing a little crumb of crescent dough inside. If it starts bubbling furiously, you're good to go.
9. Fry each one (don't do more than 2 at a time, it's just easier to manage that way) until golden on both sides.
10. Remove from the frying pan and set on paper towels to blot excess oil.
11. Enjoy warm. Serve with melted chocolate sauce for dipping, if desired (suggested). 

You may also like:

Cadbury Creme Egg Salad

Cadbury Creme Egg Foo Young

Cadbury Creme Deviled Eggs 

Cadbury Creme Eggs Benedict

Cadbury Creme Scotch Eggs

Cadbury Creme Egg in Hole Toast

 Would you eat a Cadbury Cream Egg roll?

Baker's Dozen: A Batch of Sweet Links!

Peeps S'more Pie. Yes yes yes!

Leftover Easter Candy cookies!

Cadbury Creme Eggs Benedict

Carrot Cake Truffles

The sweetest tricolor cake you've ever seen!

Peeps S'mores

Look at this flourless roulade cake for Passover, by Freeport Bakery!

Easter Candy Dessert Tacos. Believe it.

Chick-a-dee sugar cookie bars. Yeah!

Cadbury Creme Egg Salad Sandwiches!

Peeps Pizza (Peepza)

Peeps Fluffernutter

Cadbury Creme Deviled Eggs

Homemade Easter Corn

Springtime Cutout Cookie Sandwiches

...or any of these Peeps ideas.

...or at least some Peeps-inspired art like this. 

...but then again, if you want to get to know your Easter Candy a little better, you can always check out this interview with a Cadbury Creme Egg. (more Creme Egg sweetness here)

A Fine Breakfast: Easter Candy Toast

Let's be straight: you're going to need some serious energy if you're going to win the Easter egg hunt. And by "win" I mean hustle past all those nimble little kids for all of the best candy and plastic eggs filled with tasty prizes. 

So let's supercharge with a supersweet breakfast for all the power and energy you need, ok? 

That perfect dish is, of course, a little something I call Easter Candy Toast. It basically goes like this: you gently toast thick slices of pound cake in the toaster oven. Then, you melt down some Mom Blakeman's pull candy (it's a Kentucky thing, you'll have to order online; if you're in a rush, you can use vanilla taffy or vanilla tootsie rolls, but it won't be quite the same).

Once it's nice and melty, you pour a generous amount right on top of that toasty poundcake. And since it's Eastertime, you'll want to garnish it with some sprinkles and maybe a Cadbury Mini Egg or two. 

This, my friends, is what sweet victory tastes like. Because no matter what you are facing on any given day, this will give you such a powerful surge of pure sugar-energy that you will not only be able to perform with flying colors, but you might just stop fearing death. 

Just don't come crying to me when the inevitable sugar crash hits. Because I will just tell you to keep the sweetness going by having an Easter Candy taco plate for lunch.

Here's your recipe for destruction--er, perfection.

Easter Candy Toast (printable version here)

"breakfast of champions"

Serves 2

Ingredients

• 4 thick slices of pound cake
• about 1 cup Mom Blakeman's pull candy
• a nice amount of cadbury mini eggs and sprinkles, for garnish

1. Toast your pound cake in the toaster oven until it's slightly crispy around the edges. You can do this in the oven too, by setting the oven to 300 and toasting for just a cople minutes, but please don't do it in the toaster. It will stick.
2. Set the toasty pound cake to the side by putting two slices on each plate (then it will be ready to eat later) while you melt down your candy. Simply place the pull candy in a medium saucepan and heat on low-medium, stirring frequently to prevent scorching. It won't seem like it wants to melt, but it eventually will.
3. Pour the melty candy over the "toast" and garnish immediately with candy and sprinkles. Enjoy while still warm.

Easter Candy Pie Recipe

It's hard to choose a favorite Easter candy. They're all just so festive and sweet! Bunnies made of chocolate, rainbow arrays of jelly beans, adorably speckled robin's eggs, pretty pastel Easter corn, and of course, Cadbury treats, both small (mini eggs!) and large (Cadbury Creme Eggs!).

But instead of trying to pick a favorite, I decided this year that they're all good enough to share real estate in my mouth. I did this, of course, by putting them ALL into an Easter Candy Pie.

This may beg a simple question: What happens when you put all of your Easter candy in a pie shell and bake it up?

I won't beat around the bush. Here's what happens.

It's surprising that it took me so long to do this, what with the success I had doing something similar with Halloween candy. But seriously--Easter candy is so much more fun! So many more textures, flavors, and colors.

Plus (this is an aside) did you know that Russell Stover makes a Red Velvet chocolate covered Easter Egg candy?

So monstrous when it all melts together. So fascinating to watch the festive candies melt and become gnarled and scary. So gratifying to eat the gooey mound of what was once Easter candy. Together in your mouth, there is a beautiful fusion of sweet textures and tastes: jelly texture from the 'beans, toastiness from the scorched marhmallow chocolates. Is that a bit of coconut you taste, or shrapnel from the shell of a candy egg? Probably both, fused together with melty fondant from the nearby Cadbury creme egg.

Friends, I realize that you might not want to take my word for it and might desire--nay, need--to try this for yourself. And in that case, I am happy to share my recipe with you.

Easter Candy Pie

Serves between 1 and 8, depending on how hungry you are.

Ingredients

• One unbaked pie shell


• Three generous handfuls of Easter Candy (I used a melange of jelly beans, robin's eggs, Russell Stover Easter egg chocolates, and a few other treats)

Procedure

1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.


2. Take your unbaked pie shell and look at it for a moment. Are you sure you want to do this? Yes, you are.


3. Fill the mofo with that Easter candy. You want it to be full, but level (don't get greedy and mound it above the top height of the pie crust. It will get messy).


4. Bake at 400 degrees for oh, 20 to 30 minutes. (Note: I did the Halloween candy pie at 350 degrees for 30-40 minutes. You could do that too, but I was hungry, so I did it this way this time. Don't judge me).

Cadbury Creme Scotch Eggs

Let's take a moment to discuss what constitutes a "proper" Scotch Egg. This decidedly non heart-healthy delicacy starts with a hard-boiled egg, which is then wrapped in sausage meat, coated in breadcrumbs, and deep-fried.

But around Easter-time, I prefer to make mine sweet rather than savory, with Cadbury Creme Eggs.

The Cadbury Creme Scotch Egg is coated with a thick cocoa-kissed batter, then coated in cookie crumbs and deep-fried. When eaten warm, the taste calls to mind that of a deep-fried candy bars that one can find at state fairs. Though in my opinion, these have slightly more complex flavor thanks to the cocoa in the batter and the vanilla cookie crumbs. Speaking of the crumbs, they also give the treat a pleasing crunch, which acts as a nice texture contrast to the cakey batter and soft, gooey chocolate and sugar-filled interior.

It's the perfect dessert counterpart to the classic Scotch Egg: similar visually, and every bit as decadent. Happy Easter indeed.

For the full entry, visit Serious Eats! And possibly also of interest: Cadbury Creme Eggs Benedict (from my book, CakeSpy Presents Sweet Treats for a Sugar-Filled Life), Cadbury Creme Egg Salad Sandwiches, Cadbury Creme Egg Foo Young, and Cadbury Creme Deviled Eggs.

Easter Baking Experiment: Chick-A-Dee Sugar Cookie Bars

While recently wandering aimlessly in the candy aisle in the drug store, I noticed an item that was on extreme sale: the Palmer Chick-a-Dee chocolate crispie candy. Like seriously--they were 39 cents each or something.

Needless to say, I bought a bushel of these sweet chicks, and maybe one or two more items.

On the way home, I pondered how they might taste all melted on top of a layer of sugar cookie bars. Would the faces melt off of the chicks? Would it all melt into a layer of chocolatey goo on top? Either way, it sounded tasty, so I set myself to this delicious task.

To hasten the process, I used Betty Crocker Sugar Cookie Mix. I mixed it according to the instructions, adding a stick of butter and an egg to the mix, and stirring it until it was a soft, sticky dough.

Then I pressed it into a well greased pie plate (because I couldn't find a square pan). 

And then on top of that, I placed several of the Chick-A-Dee candies. And, for fun and visual appeal, I dotted the negative space areas (can you tell I went to art school?) with Robin's Egg candies. Why not?

Then I put it in the oven. Goodnight, sweet chicks.

Now, to bake the cookies according to the package instructions, you bake them 5-7 minutes. But since I was baking bars, I set the timer for 12 minutes. At 12 minutes here's what I saw:

So I kept 'em in for 20 minutes or so. At that point I felt confident that they'd baked through, and the edges were golden. 

Weirdly, the chocolate candies never actually...melted. They just kind of got melt-y. I guess that's not so different from what happens to chocolate chips while baking in cookies. But still--the baking process altered them just enough to be sort of strange and pockmarked looking. 

But they were still highly delicious. Those little crispies tasted great against the melty chocolate and sugar cookie mixture. I went ahead and ate it with a spoon because let's be honest, this wasn't what I'd call a high-class baking experiment. 

And oh, how satisfying it was. 

Hoppy Easter, friends. If you want to do this at home, it's easy: just prepare a batch of Betty Crocker sugar cookie mix per the instructions on the bag, press it into a greased pan, top with the chocolate Easter candies of your choice, and bake at 375 til nice and toasty around the edges and set in the middle (20 minutes or so). 

Enjoy!

Sweet Treats: Peeps Dumplings

Today, I found myself with a few little ingredient odds and ends at hand.

Included: Peeps, pie crust, tinted coconut.

And so I thought...why not engage in a little Peeps Torture? After all, this a documented fun activity. Who hasn't enjoyed a little Easter-time Peeps torture? 

And so, I cut out scraps of pie crust in a size about 5 inches by 5 inches.

On top of it, I laid a little bed of tinted coconut.

And then I put a Peep on top of that...like putting it on a little nest. 

And then I gathered the crust and sort of "tented" it around the peep. Like a little bed!

Is it just me, or does Peep #2 look a little concerned?

Well, he had good reason for concern. He was next to be put into a bed. A forever bed.

and then...I put these little dumplings in the oven. And then...

Aaaaaah!

Here's how to make this magic happen at home.

Peeps Dumplings

Ingredients

• Pie crust scraps (enough to roll back out to about 5x5 inches)
• As many Peeps as you have pie scrap pieces
• shredded coconut 
• Chocolate chips or chocolate pieces (I didn't to this but think it would taste good so I am suggesting it here)

Procedure

1. Place one Peep and whichever fillings you'd like on the center of each piece of pie crust.
2. Form a little "tent" around the peep, making sure to seal the top off to prevent oozing.
3. Bake at 400 degrees for 7-10 minutes, or until it starts to brown.
4. Let cool, but serve still slightly warm.

Peeping Yum: Leftover Peeps S'more Pie Recipe for Serious Eats

Easter is over, which means that all of the Easter candy is available at extreme discount (so glad!). And here's a perfect way to use those surplus sugarcoated marshmallow creatures: Peeps S'more Ice Cream Pie.

Made by filling a buttery graham cracker crust with rocky road ice cream, this frozen delight gets a sweet finish with broiled Peeps nesting on top, making for a treat that is as much eye candy as it is sweet to eat.

For the full entry and recipe, visit Serious Eats!