Chocolate Marshmallow Easter Eggs

Supplies:

• one batch of Marshmallow, made during the first session.
• some Butter Icing made in the third session:

  25g butter
  1/2 cup icing sugar
  1/8 tsp vanilla essence
  1 drop yellow food colouring
  hot water if needed

• 4kg flour
• lots of baking dishes with sides at least 2.5cm high
• positive form of half egg shape (cut lengthways). An actual egg is fine, but a half-egg shaped from modelling clay with a handle is easier to use.
• 400-450g milk chocolate
• 13-15g food grade paraffin - optional. (Most NZ supermarkets stock National Preserving Wax. Each plug is around 14g.)
• a pastry brush

First Session

1. Spread flour into trays around 1.5-2cm deep and make 80 half-egg-shaped depressions in it with your half egg shape positive (expecting around 75 half eggs worth of marshmallow)
2. Make one batch marshmallow and pour into the flour depressions. Leave at least four hours to set, ideally covered. Leaving overnight is best.

1. Remove marshmallows from the flour, rubbing the flat surfaces in the flour to mop up their stickiness. Brush excess flour off with a dry pastry brush. The flour can now be returned to your pantry to use as normal so long as you remove all the flecks of marshmallow.
2. Break 300g chocolate into squares and melt (microwave 60 sec at 75% power, stir, repeat in 30 sec bursts till done). Melt parrafin separately, chopped up and placed in a shallow dish balanced over a container of freshly boiled water (will take about 10 minutes with several changes of water). Stir the paraffin into the chocolate.
3. Place marshmallow halves flat side down one at a time on a board at a comfortable height and spread the half in front of you with melted chocolate using a knife. Move aside each half after coating and scrape off any chocolate that's landed around it on the board. Place another half in front of you and use the scraped up chocolate to start coating the next one.
4. Place the trays of half-coated egg halves in the fridge to set. NB: If you can't coat all the eggs at once, when you stop allow the chocolate to solidify. When you're ready to start again simply break it into smallish pieces and remelt it. If you need more chocolate then melt chocolate and paraffin as before, using 1g paraffin for every 24g chocolate. At this level the paraffin helps the chocolate to set without greyish white 'bloom' but can't really be tasted.

1. Make butter icing: Melt butter and stir into icing sugar. Add vanilla essence and food colouring and mix till colour is evenly distributed. Add a little hot water if necessary to make it more pliable.
2. Spread out half of your marshmallow halves flat side up. I put mine in egg trays, balanced between the ridges. Pinch off small pieces of butter icing (approx 1/4 tsp), shape into flat ovals and place one on each egg half.
3. Melt 100g chocolate. Spread melted chocolate with a knife onto the remaining halves one by one and press onto the halves on the tray. Place a flat and not-very-heavy object (e.g. an empty baking tray) onto the eggs for at least 10 minutes so that they are properly aligned as they start to stick together.
4. Put eggs into the fridge to finish setting.