Easter Candy Bites
This month’s Master Baker theme is Easter candy. At first, it sounds like it might be easy to bake something with Easter candy, but I had a hard time coming up with something. I wanted to highlight one of my favorite Easter candies. I planned to use either Starburst Jelly Beans, Peeps, or Cadbury creme eggs. The creme eggs are my absolute favorites and I prefer the mini-eggs because they are bite size and less messy. The big eggs are also a lot of sugar to handle all at once.
Immediately I thought of putting a Cadbury egg in a cupcake. But since the eggs are so sweet, I thought it would be overkill. Instead, I came up with this idea. It was a trial and error effort. I found out that if you bake creme eggs, the inside gets hard. I wanted the creme filling to remain in it’s gooey goodness state. I found a solution on the third try.
Cadbury Egg Bites – Adapted from Allrecipes.com – makes 18
1/2 cup butter, softened
1 (3 ounce) package cream cheese
1/4 cup white sugar
1 cup all-purpose flour
15 unwrapped mini Cadbury creme eggs
Preheat oven to 375F.
In a medium bowl, mix together the butter, cream cheese and sugar until smooth. Stir in the flour and mix thoroughly. The dough should be somewhat firm. Roll into 18 small balls (I used a cookie scoop), place them on a plate and refrigerate for one hour.
While dough is chilling, unwrap creme eggs and put into a bowl in the fridge.
Press the chilled dough balls into the bottom and up the sides of tart pans or mini muffin cups. Bake for 15 minutes in preheated oven. IMMEDIATELY upon removing from oven, push one mini-egg into each cup. Push them in as far as you can.
Allow to cook 5 minutes in the pan before removing to a cooling rack. These are best enjoyed the same day they are prepared.
I am Jen the Beantown Baker. Engineer by day and baking maven by night. Hubby serves as my #1 fan and official taste tester. We got hitched back in 2006. Barefoot. In the sand. With the waves crashing behind us. It was one of the best decisions we’ve ever made. 
Mmmmm I love one dish cupcakes!
http://www.brisbanebaker.blogspot.com
Those cupcakes look delish! Can you tell me more about the “dipping in ganache” technique? Does the ganache need to be a certain consistency first?
I have seen some maple cheesecake around the blogs, maybe that would be awesome use for the sugar? Or to top maple sugar cookies 🙂
I made a seriously awesome maple mousse cake to go with Christmas dinner this year and it used maple sugar. It was one of the best desserts I’ve ever eaten. The link to the post is: http://joanne-eatswellwithothers.blogspot.com/2010/01/frozen-maple-mousse-pie-with-chocolate.html.
Go Butler!! I think I’m going to use your “go to” cupcake recipe to make some Final Four treats for the office Friday
Wow that maple syrup event looks really cool, I wish I had known about it- it looks like they only do it once a year!
Carly – I dipped the cupcakes in the ganache while it was still very liquidy. I did it a few minutes after making the ganache and then let it set up on the cupcakes. Hope that helps.
Jen, the maple syrup experience sounds like so much fun and I’ve always wanted to do it! I wonder if it’s too late this year.
Those cupcakes look so pretty. Can you tell me what kind of liners you’re using? They stay so nice and bright.
ooo I love sugar houses!!! The tastings are always the best 🙂
Lila, I get the liners online. Here is the link for the colored ones, and I also get brown liners as well.
The cupcakes look beautiful and festive!! I love real maple syrup!
I should have a birthday more often. So good…