My Godmother shared many recipes with my family through the years. She loved a good food. One that I will always remember making with her while I was a kid were these Chocolate Covered Easter Eggs. I didnt like them so much when I was little, but my taste buds grew up and now they are so addicting. So I thought I would make a batch of them and share the recipe with you. Here goes…

First, the cast of characters:

1 box of confectioner’s sugar

1 package of UNSWEETENED Baker’s chocolate

3 cups of flaked coconut

4 Tablespoons butter

1 medium sized or 2 small potatoes (no specific type, any potato will do), (cooked, peeled & mashed)

wax paper

baking sheets

First, cook the potatoes. I cooked two, one medium sized and a small one just in case I needed it (I didn’t, but you might). Cook until the potato is soft through.

While the potato is cooking, line a baking sheet with wax paper…

And if you’re like me, you’ll try to see if a regular sized baking sheet will fit in your side by side freezer just to make sure…and if you’re also like me, you’ll figure out that no, indeed they will not fit and then you’ll get out a few layer cake pans and line those instead…

I lined five, but for a single batch of this recipe I only needed 3 of them…dually noted!

Peel a potato. The recipe says to start out with using a 1/2 or a 1/3 of the potato, but I needed the whole medium potato. I did not use the small potato at all.

Cut potato in half and start with a half…you don’t want the mixture to become too wet so it’s better to wait and add the potato as needed.

Mash the potato…

Measure out 3 cups of coconut…

Now, start to switch back and forth between adding coconut and adding the package of confectioner’s sugar. A little bit of each at a time.

Coconut…

Confectioner’s sugar…

Back and forth, back and forth, one and then the other, etc. etc. etc. until you’ve added all the coconut and all of the confectioner’s sugar. The mixture should be the consistency of a thick cookie batter. Like so…

If it’s not wet enough then add another bit of potato.

If it’s too wet, add more confectioner’s sugar.

You should be able to roll about about 2 tablespoons worth into a ball and then smoosh it into an egg shape in your hands. That’s the consistency you want.

See it kind of left a residue on my hands, but that’s ok, as long as you can roll the mixture into a ball without it being too dry or too wet, and they can stand on their own without oozing apart, it’s good.

Make an egg shape…

Then put them on your wax paper covered baking pans a little bit apart (this will be important later).

And put all the eggs on the pans in the freezer…

(In my case on top of the very cold liquor is a fabulous place for one of the pans.)

Let the eggs freeze.

Once frozen, wait to take them out until I say so…

At this point, you’ll need to make a double boiler if you don’t have one. I don’t have one so I used a bakable/heatable corningware dish in a frying pan with water in the frying pan…

Melt down 4 of the 8 squares of unsweeted chocolate inside the corningware/doubleboiler.

Have the other four squares of chocolate ready to go, you’ll definitely need all of them.

Hee hee, they look like they’re going to slaughter…MOO!

While the chocolate is trying to melt, it helps to stir it around to get it to melt quicker.

It will get to a raging boil, that’s ok…AS LONG AS YOUR DISH IN THE PAN IS HEAT TOLERABLE..PLEASE DON’T HURT YOURSELF!!!

As the chocolate is melting add 2 tablespoons of butter. You’ll need the other 2 tablespoons when you melt the other 4 squares of chocolate.

(Note: you could probably melt all of the chocolate and butter at once, but I didn’t have a big enough corningware dish to melt everything at once so I split it all in half and did it that way.)

Once everything is melted…then it’s time for the fun part!!!

Now’s the time to take the pans of eggs out of the freezer, one tray at a time. Don’t take all the pans out at once, because you want the eggs to remain cold for dipping in hot chocolate purposes.

Dip each coconut egg into the chocolate mixture…you’ll have to choose your weapon(s) of choice for this task. I started out using a Pampered Chef onion fork to spear the egg, but it wasn’t working out so well, so I wound up putting each egg on a fork, dunking it in the chocolate and aiding the retrieval of the egg with a spoon for support, which I don’t have pictures of.

The recipe says to use a two prong fork, such as you would use for grilling or cutting steak, but for the life of me I couldn’t think of us having one, and forgot all about our carving knife and two prong fork set. Noted for next time!!!

Make sure the entire egg is covered, top, bottom & sides…

Then place then once by one back on the wax paper covered trays. This would be why it’s important to keep the eggs separated a bit on the trays.

Then as you complete each tray, put them in the REFRIGERATOR…do not return them to the freezer…nothing bad will happen if you do, but they don’t need to be in the freezer, the refrigerator is fine.

Once you’ve given the chocolate a chance to set in the refrigerator, take them out of the refrigerator and trim away any of the dripped and pooled chocolate around the bottom of the eggs. You don’t HAVE to do this, but presentation wise, they’ll look nicer if you do. Make sure you use a sharp knife though, othersie the chocolate will chip away from the egg too.

At this point they are “nomnomnommible”!!! I dare you to eat just one!

You should put them in a container to store them in the refrigerator once the chocolate has set.

And because I’m so nice, I will make the sacrifice and take a bite out of one so you can see what your end result will look like…

Aren’t I nice? I’ll do anything for you! I’ll stop at nothing to make sure you know what you’re getting! There went that 60 minutes of cardio I did this morning! You owe me!

NomNomNom!!!

Here goes:

Gather your ingredients…

20 Scallops

salt and pepper

olive oil

1/4 cup flour

4 tablespoons unsalted butter

1 cup chopped shallots (3 shallots)

8 ounces mushrooms, thick slices

1/2 cup dry white wine

8 ounces baby spinach

2 table spoons grated parmesan cheese

lemon wedges

Got all that?  Well if you have all that, it should look like this (or kind of like this):

If you have all that stuff…you might be missing one thing…here..I’ll show you…you’ll ned one of these too:

A helper…and you can’t have this one…she’s mine…get your own!

Preheat the oven to 275 degrees.

Take out your scallops and pat them dry with paper towels…

Heat up 2 table spoons of olive oil in a saute pan:

Flour the scallops while the oil heats up:

Shake any residual flour that you can off the scallops:

The recipe says to do half the scallops at a time but I didn’t.  I did them all, and flipped them half way through cooking.  Cook the scallops for 3 minutes on the first side and 2 minutes on the second side.

The recipe also says to put salt and pepper on the scallops before your flour them…but I didn’t, because I forgot, so I just put it on after they were in the saute pan and it was fine…trust me…

See? Just fine!  And no, that’s not real Corona bottles, they are salt and pepper shakers we stole one time from a Mexican place..shhhhhhh!

Once you’ve browned the scallops…NO NEED TO COOK THEM COMPLETELY, they should be pink inside, place them in a oven approved platter type dish. I used my Pampered Chef Stoneware bar pan.

Place these in the oven to keep them warm while you cook up the rest of the ingredients.

Now…in sauce pan place half a stick (also known as a 1/4 cup) of unsalted butter:

While the butter is melting, chop up the 3 shallots:

I used my Pampered Chef Food Chopper because it is awesome like that!

Toss the shallots in the melted butter an let cook for 2 minutes over medium heat.

Intermission so the cat can say hi:

I don’t recommend you use her as your helper…what with the cat hair and whatnot! She was also very busy bathing herself!

Next, (I bought presliced mushrooms because I’m lazy like that tonight) cook the mushrooms down for about 4-5 minutes until they are browned:

Then once they are browned, add in a 1/4 cup of white wine:

Note here…the smell is so wonderful…just take a moment to bask in it.  This would be the moment you wish the interweb had sniffer capabilities…alas it doesn’t, so you’ll just have to go make this on your own…

YUM!

Cook down the wine for 2 minutes.

Rinse the baby spinach…and don’t be a dope like me and buy the regular sized spinach…I adjusted accordingly by cutting the bigger spinach into smaller pieces and it cooks down anyway, but baby spinach would’ve been way easier:

I also dried my spinach off a bit…

Add the spinach in a little bit at a time, as it wilts more room will free up to add a little more, repeat as necessary until you’ve added all the spinach:

That huge bag of spinach cooked down to nothing.  For such a wonderful vegetable it sure doesn’t offer much when cooked:

Recipe calls for 2 grated tablespoons of parmesan cheese, but I love cheese so I didn’t actually measure…

I love this gadget…so easy and fun to use…

So now you’ve cooked up the mushrooms and spinach and the scallops are warming in the oven.  Now take the scallops out of the oven and place the mushroom/spinach mixture over the top of the scallops:

Sprinkle the grated parmesan cheese on top of the scallops, mushrooms and spinach:

Then put it all back in the oven for 3 minutes.

Once you’ve baked it, take it out and sprinkle it with pepper and drizzle some fresh squeezed lemon on top:

I used a spatula to take it off the stoneware, only because I wanted the upside of it, up.  I didn’t want to toss it about, even though it would’ve been fine if I had.

Next step?  Well this is possibly the most important part of the whole entire thing…are you paying attention?  This will either make or break your meal!  It is imperative you pay close attention!!!  This is the difference between a meal that you can enjoy and a meal gone terribly interrupted and wrong!!!!  Actually there’s another step after this that I almost forgot that is equally if not more important than this one so listen up!! Ready?  Observe!

See that? That’s an ice cream cone.  See that kid in the background?  That’s a toddler who defines perpetual motion!  If I made this meal and she interrupts it…we’re gonna come to blows!!!  If she ruins this dinner and she disrupts it so help me I’ll take that paddle there on the right hand side of the picture, hanging there on the wall and paddle a canoe across the lake!!!  So continue to observe…

Now THAT is a happy kid!!!  A HAPPY kid who will let me eat my dinner in peace!!!  A HAPPY kid with an ice cream cone strategically supplied with just the right amount of ice cream for me to eat my food.

And yes, she polished that whole thing off.  It was only one scoop of ice cream, but the cone really made her day!  I could tell!

Put dinner on the table and say grace:

But WAIT!!!

Now…that final step which I mentioned I almost forgot…watch…

The time out moose was ready and waiting for something…I don’t know what…Li’l Foot doesn’t go to time out (yet!) so he’s just observing and supervising!

He’ll just throw penalty flags for drinking the wine too fast or something…

And then watch as someone else takes a bite first…to make sure it’s ok…

And then pat yourself on the back when his plate gets to looking like this…

This was a super easy recipe.  Not too many ingredients.  Easy prep! Easy cooking! It maybe took me an hour altogether to cook it from start to finish (but that also included picture taking and washing hands every five seconds so I didn’t goop up the camera!  And that’s it.  It’s really easy.  Now go make it, I promise it won’t disappoint, nles you don’t like scallops……or mushrooms…..or spinach…well, then you’ll just have to wait another couple years until I find another recipe that I liked enough to blog about it!