The Life of an Egg

This is a journey of some lucky eggs' lives: From the beginning when it plops out of you-know-where, followed by a varied and interesting journey , ending with a most scrumptious coup de gras.. into your Caramel Cheese Flan hole.

Step 1: Plop!

We have a lot of chickens, and after the winter slowdown, they are back in full swing. Lots of eggs!

Step 2: Get Embellishments

I purchased some flowers at my local Flower Shop.

I got white, orange, blue and magenta.

She thought it would be a nice idea to just remove all the petals and glue those on.

It worked great!

Step 3: Embellish

I used a tacky glue, and cut petals or groups of petals off from their stems and glued those onto the eggs in varying fashions.

Layering looked nice and it was fun to try different combinations.

Step 4: Still Embellishing

You can really get creative and stylish with all the plant parts.

I even used some of the leaves to offset the pretty colors.

Step 5: Done and Beautiful

They look delicate and lovely!

Should be a nice contrast to the barren, dead and snowy ground that I'll put them on for my daughter's egg hunt.

I covered with saran and put them in the fridge for the next day.

Step 6: Hide

We had a dozen eggs to hide.

We didn't hide them so much as it was cold and windy, the most amount of fun would be a fast and furious 15 minutes. The snow made a lot of the areas un passable, but it is certainly possible to hide eggs outside even when you've been stuck with a late winter. The sun was shining and the Flowered eggs were a nice contrast to the snow.

Since they were still uncooked, we made sure the basket was lined with a soft towel. And that proper handling was given to the eggs.

: D

Step 7: Hunt

I took a lot of pictures.

She really enjoyed the scavenge(who doesn't!) and appreciated the work that went into the decorating of the eggs.

Step 8: Disassemble & Reassemble

(I got the recipe from here: myrecipes.com/recipe/caramel-cream-cheese-flan)

Caramel Cream Cheese Flan

ingredients:

1.5 cups sugar

7 egg yolks

4 egg whites

14 oz can sweetened condensed milk

12 oz. can evaporated milk

3/4 cup of milk

1.5 tsp vanilla extract

8 oz pkg cream cheese

tools:

blender, mixer, large and medium bowls, saucepan, measuring cups/spoons, can opener, wooden spoon, cake/pie pans, larger shallow pan

directions:

Cook cup of sugar in saucepan over medium heat. Keep stirring, but pushing sugar down into bottom, keeping off of walls of pan. Break up crumbles as they form. After about 10 minutes it should be liquefied and super-hot.

Quickly pour into cake/pie pan. It should be poured into a cake pan, preferable greased. Since my Mom's daughter's are all grown up and she didn't foresee ever having to make us birthday cakes any more, she tossed them all out. So I used a pie plate and a small pyrex sauce pan for the extra, as a cake pan definitely holds more than a pie plate(much taller walls).

You want it to coat the entire bottom. Set aside for it to harden.

Separate eggs. Whisk 7 yolks in a large bowl, then add condensed milk, evaporated milk, whole milk, extract and salt. Blend everything with whisk or hand mixer. Set aside.

Preheat oven to 350. Place a large casserole dish or pan, bigger than flan pan, into oven, filled 1/3 way with water.

In blender, add whites, cream cheese, 1/2 cup of sugar. Blend. This is not much liquid, so you may have to stop midway and mediate with wooden spoon. If you have a real blender, skip that last sentence. Now add 1 cup of the yolk mixture to the blender, blend, add another cup and blend, then add this blended mixture to the small remaining yolk mixture in the large bowl and mix all of that so it looks uniform and lovely.

Pour this over hardened sugar mix in pan. Place in oven, into water-filled pan.

Bake for 50 minutes.

Cool on counter for 2 hours, then put in fridge for at least 6, up to a day or two.

We put it in at night on Easter day. When we finished playing "Go to the head of the class" we went to bed, dreaming about Flan for Breakfast. (not really)

When flan has chilled enough, take out of fridge and run butter knife all along edges. loosening flan from sides of pan. Place plate over this and flip. Flan should release within seconds.

It is so good for breakfast!!

Step 9: Devour

It is REALLY good. My new addiction. I'm going to try this with strawberries instead of the liquified sugar thing, as that was kinda tedious.

For breakfast is extra nice!

It is very rich, so start off with a small slice. If you don't feel drowsy within 10 minutes, have another slice. Then you will.

One way to store this is to stick toothpicks into various spots, like the center and 5 more around the edges, and then cover with saran wrap. (otherwise the heavenly-sticky layer will stick)

I've entered this into a contest, or two, so please give me a vote if you think I deserve it.

Thanks!

~ Cynthia