Eggshell Cupcakes

These were tricky, but fun as hell. Thanks to The Cupcake Project for the recipe.

I made 2.5 dozen for my office and they were a /huge/ hit.

Ingredients

-- Egg Shells --
18 white eggs (Only three get used in the cake-- the rest are just used for their shells.)
1/2 cup of water for every egg color you want
1 tablespoon vinegar for every egg color you want
Food coloring (as many colors as you'd like)

-- Cupcake Ingredients --
1 cup gluten-free flour
2 eggs (from above)
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
3/4 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 cup sour cream

-- Cream Cheese "Yolk" Ingredients --
1 egg (from above)
8 ounces cream cheese, room temperature
1/3 cup sugar
Gold and yellow food coloring

Instructions

1. Carefully poke a small hole in the top of each egg using a corkscrew bottle opener (or something similar) then peel back the edges of the hole to open it a bit.

2. Turn each egg upside-down and dump out its contents. Keep the contents of two eggs separate for the cake recipe and one egg separate for the cream cheese "yolks." You can store the rest of the eggs in tupperware for use later-- keep them in groups of two, otherwise it's hard to determine numbers later.


3. Rinse out the eggs in the sink and then drown in salted water for half an hour. Once thoroughly scoured, rinse them with cold water to remove the salt.

4. Fun time now! Make one cup of water vinegar and food coloring for each color you like. Decorate!

Remove eggs from dye and set aside to dry. I did all this on the first night, so I could concentrate on the cupcakes the second night.

5. For the cupcakes: mix the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in a medium-sized bowl and set aside. In a large bowl, mix eggs and sugar until light and creamy. Add the butter and vanilla and mix until fully integrated. Mix in the dry ingredients until just combined. Add the sour cream and mix until smooth.

6. For the "yolk" filling: mix cream cheese, egg, and sugar until smooth. Add food coloring until the mixture looks yolk-colored.


7. Place each egg into a mini muffin tin holder. You can use aluminum foil to adapt a regular muffin tin too.

8. Fill a piping bag (or Pampered Chef pastry gun) with batter. Make sure the tip can fit inside the hole you created in the eggs. Fill each egg 1/4 of the way with batter, then top with "yolk" until 1/2 full. Add more batter on top of "yolk" until they're 3/4 full.


For reference this is what overfilling your eggs looks like:

And this is what it leads to:


However, you can just peel off the extra and clean the shell with a damp towel to clean it off. This can take off some of the dye, but I think it made them look really neat and tie-dye like.

9. In any case, bake the eggs at 350 F for 20 minutes. Let them cool and crack 'em open!

- Jezebel