14 Ways To Use Cadbury Creme Eggs You Probably Never Considered
Who doesn't love a Cadbury Creme Egg? These delectable little treats have been capturing hearts since 1971, and what used to be a firmly British confection is now available all over the world. Typically only available from January to Easter, Cadbury's Creme Eggs are a tale of two halves. The outside of the candy is a thick wall of chocolate, formed into an egg shape, with the inside containing a two-tone sweet sugar fondant, complete with its own orange "yolk."
The combination of its visual appeal and its unique taste makes the Creme Egg a showstopping chocolate that most people enjoy on its own. The creativity of the Cadbury Creme Egg, though, begs the question: What if we got a little creative with how we ate it, too? The truth is that there are dozens of ways to incorporate Cadbury's Creme Eggs into recipes that can make your desserts festive, fancy, and freakin' delicious. As well as this, Creme Eggs can be used in combinations you may never have expected (a Creme Egg cocktail, anyone?), elevating the sweet treat to new heights. After checking out these wild and wonderful ways to use Cadbury Creme Eggs, you'll never eat them the same way again.
1. Pop them in a toasted sandwich
The vast majority of the time, grilled sandwiches are savory and, more often than not, contain cheese. So what if we told you that you could get all the gooeyness of a grilled cheese while keeping things ultra-sweet? This is exactly what happens when you make yourself a Creme Egg toastie, which uses a sandwich toaster and Creme Egg pieces to create a melted chocolate delight. All you have to do is break up a Creme Egg, place it in between two slices of white bread that have been buttered on the outside, and put the whole thing in a sandwich toaster.
As the sandwich heats up, the outside turns crispy while the chocolate inside melts, mingling with the fondant filling. This filling gives the whole sandwich a slight chewiness that you wouldn't get if you were just melting pure chocolate. While the sandwich packs a huge punch of flavor without any additions, there are also loads of ways you can jazz it up to make it even more delicious. Try using cinnamon-spiked sugar dusted on the inside, or add in a drizzle of strawberry jelly before toasting for added sweetness. Throwing in a scoop of peanut butter, meanwhile, will give your sandwich some mellow nuttiness, as well as some filling protein and fiber.
2. Make deviled Creme Eggs
Deviled eggs are a pretty retro appetizer, but it's that throwback feeling that keeps people loving them. So if you want to give your guests what they want while simultaneously trying something brand new, give your deviled eggs a twist by making them out of Creme Eggs and serving them for dessert. Doing this is surprisingly simple and follows a similar process to making regular deviled eggs, namely slicing your Creme Eggs in half and piping in a brand-new filling. One key difference, though, is that you don't scoop out your Creme Eggs' insides and instead just pipe a vanilla buttercream directly on top, giving it a double punch of sugary flavor.
When slicing your Creme Eggs in half, make sure you use a super-sharp knife and cut directly down the seam that joins the two chocolate pieces together. Cadbury Creme Egg shells are surprisingly thick, and failing to do these two things will pose the risk of cutting it poorly, leaving you with misshapen pieces. Try to find yourself a fine star tip to pipe your buttercream onto the eggs, too, to give them decorative flair. In place of the customary paprika sprinkled over your eggs, use some red sprinkles or a dusting of cinnamon. You could also pop a Mini Egg on top of them for a double-egg, double-chocolate sensation.
3. Stuff them into pastry
Chocolate and pastry are a match made in heaven, but far too many people don't realize that making chocolate-laced baked goods is achievable in their own kitchens. All you need is a few Creme Eggs, some ready-rolled puff pastry, and a bit of artistry. Creme Egg puff pastry twists are the work of mere moments and are achieved by rolling the pastry out into long strips, placing dotted pieces of chopped-up Creme Egg across them, and twisting them into a spiral shape before baking. The Creme Egg pieces will soften inside the pastry, with the fondant giving each bite a bit of extra bounce and flavor.
Twists aren't the only shape you can make with Creme Egg puff pastries, either: Plaits, stars, rolls, and squares can all be stuffed with Creme Eggs for a similar effect. If you want to keep things especially old school, you can even make a twist (excuse the pun) on a pain au chocolat using the confectionery. Using the same pre-made puff pastry and Cadbury Mini Creme Eggs, you simply roll the chocolate up into the dough, making a roughly cylindrical shape, before brushing with an egg wash and baking. The result is an amped-up take on the classic French breakfast staple, with added flair.
4. Serve your Creme Egg like a classic breakfast egg
If you're running out of breakfast ideas or just want to serve a seriously special morning meal, this next one's for you. Cadbury's Creme Eggs, with their dippable fondant and ovular shape, are a straight swap for a regular soft-boiled egg. Grab an egg cup, slice the top of your Creme Egg, and place it inside. Then, while you butter some toast to slice into "soldiers," microwave your Creme Egg for a few seconds. This microwaving moment is crucial, as it helps to soften the fondant inside, making it dippable.
Once your toast is buttered and sliced and your egg is warm, you can then dip your soldiers into the candied yolk, before eating the shell as a treat at the end. To amp this meal up and make it even more fancy, you can make your toast soldiers from egg-battered brioche bread sprinkled with cinnamon sugar, which will give an added boost of sweetness and a slightly spicy flavor. Naturally, though, we wouldn't recommend having this for breakfast every morning — after the initial sugar rush, you might be in a pretty bad mood for the rest of the day! A better choice might be to serve it as a fun dessert at the end of a brunch.
5. Use them as a cocktail garnish
We're huge lovers of sweet cocktails, and we firmly believe that each one needs the perfect garnish. So when we realized that the classic Creme Egg flavor could be incorporated into a cocktail, with a piece of the candy to top it off, we had to try it. A Cadbury Creme Egg cocktail can be made by combining vanilla vodka, crème de cacao, Chartreuse, and a little heavy cream. When mixed, the concoction is poured into a glass rimmed with melted chocolate and topped with chocolate shavings and a Mini Creme Egg.
Each of the ingredients in the cocktail mirrors a different part of the Creme Egg itself. The crème de cacao gives the drink an intensely chocolatey flavor, matching the Creme Egg's shell, with its undercurrent of vanilla giving hints of the fondant inside. This vanilla flavor is boosted by the vanilla vodka, with the heavy cream helping to underpin both the chocolate and the vanilla notes and give that sense of luxury that a Creme Egg delivers. The Chartreuse, meanwhile, has a honey-like, slightly grassy tone that helps to offset all of the creaminess going on in the drink.
6. Combine Creme Eggs and Pop-Tarts
If you're still bitter about the fact that your mom never let you have chocolate for breakfast, now's the time to get your own back with a homemade Creme Egg Pop-Tart. This treat has the added fun factor of making your own Pop-Tarts from scratch, which can sound daunting but is pretty simple. You just make a simple dough from flour, salt, sugar, eggs, and milk, adding in cream cheese for a little sourness and some creamy flavor. Once it's been allowed to rest, it's cut into rectangles. Chopped Creme Eggs are then stuffed in between two dough pieces, and they're then baked until golden and oozing with melted chocolate.
Aside from the sheer nostalgia factor you get with this dish, there are also some fairly developed flavor combos going on. The balance of the cream cheese-laced dough with the sweet filling means that the Creme Eggs don't take over each pastry flavor-wise. The cream cheese also supplies a light sourness that cuts through the sugar from the chocolate and fondant and has the added benefit of helping the pastry brown better. Just make sure you eat these while they're still warm, so the Creme Egg filling doesn't cool and solidify.
7. Add them to shortbread cookies
Shortbread cookies stand out thanks to their simplicity. These traditional delicacies, which were developed into their modern form by chefs in the 16th-century court of Mary, Queen of Scots, are well known for being flaky, buttery, and typically adorned with little more than a dusting of sugar. Amping them up, though, by making them into a Creme Egg-laced millionaire's shortbread, can turn a classic treat into something modern and exciting.
Millionaire's shortbread uses shortbread as a base and then layers thick caramel and dark chocolate before being cut into squares. We prefer to use Creme Eggs in millionaire's shortbread not in the cookies themselves but halved and studded on top. This gives the shortbread pieces a visual flair and a pop of sugary fondant when biting into each one. The milk chocolate of the Creme Eggs also plays against the slightly bitter notes of the dark chocolate, with the ultimate flavor being multi-layered and full of complexity. You can, of course, melt Creme Eggs and mix them into the chocolate layer, should you wish. Just bear in mind that you might not need the sweetness in the chocolate itself, due to the layer of sweet caramel underneath.
8. Pop one into a Scotch egg
If you've never had a Scotch egg, you've been missing out. These evergreen pub snacks are made by covering a boiled egg in sausage meat, rolling it in bread crumbs, and deep-frying the whole thing until the meat is cooked and the outside is crispy and brown. When made well, they're the perfect balance of saltiness, crispiness, and meatiness.
You can't deny, though, that Scotch eggs are a lot. So, if you want to sweeten things up, make yourself a Cadbury Creme Egg version. You can do this by wrapping a Creme Egg in a mixture of broken-up brownies and chocolate buttercream, before coating the outside with chocolate shavings and, if you wish, a dusting of icing sugar. The best part about making Creme Egg Scotch eggs is that there's no deep-frying involved and, if you're buying ready-made brownies, no cooking at all. After you assemble each one, they just need to be chilled until you're ready to serve them. For the ultimate pub experience, slice each one in half and serve them on a wooden board.
9. Whip them into a milkshake
A Creme Egg milkshake might sound like something your kid has dreamt up, but trust us when we say that people of all ages will enjoy this treat. Interestingly, this milkshake doesn't incorporate Cadbury Creme Eggs into the liquid itself but instead seeks to imitate the taste and texture of the egg and fondant by combining chocolate ice cream, milk, corn syrup, butter, vanilla, and a touch of salt. After the whole thing is blended and topped with whipped cream, a Creme Egg is then delicately balanced on top.
As the fondant drips down into the milkshake, it further flavors the drink, giving it added body and thickness and pleasing pops of intense sugariness. This milkshake is the perfect drink to kick off Easter celebrations, but there's no denying that it's pretty rich. If you want, you can swap out the corn syrup for a different sweetener like honey or molasses, which can mellow out some of the sugariness with light caramelized notes. To thin it out slightly, you can also add in a little more milk or use skimmed milk.
10. Tuck Creme Eggs into a calzone
Getting a brand-new pizza oven can be an exciting moment. What's less exciting, though, is when you realize that you only use it twice a year, and the rest of the time it sits dormant in your yard. That's why we love finding new ways to use a pizza oven, like with a Creme Egg calzone. Cadbury Creme Eggs, Mini Eggs, and mascarpone cheese are stuffed into pizza dough, folded over, and then baked until the outside is blistered and the inside has melted.
One of the best things about this recipe is there's no need to use a different recipe for your pizza dough: You can use your standard formula, and it'll turn out just as well. The charring that your pizza oven gives the dough works beautifully with the creamy chocolate-and-cheese filling, giving the whole affair a smokiness and depth. The mascarpone, meanwhile, gives your filling an almost nutty taste and works to balance the sugariness of the chocolate egg components. We recommend serving this up as a dessert following an al fresco pizza night, on the first warm evening of the year. Heaven!
11. Push them into a Bundt cake
Bundt cakes are the perfect vessel for other flavors, with their showstopping circular shape serving as a visually appealing base for extravagant ingredients. We doubt you've ever seen anything as extravagant as a Creme Egg-studded Bundt cake, though. To achieve this, all you need to do is whip up a cocoa-infused Bundt cake batter, pour it into your tin, and then lightly push Creme Eggs into the mixture, spacing them out evenly. When you then cut into the cooked cake, the creme eggs will split and ooze out their delicious fondant all over the delicate crumb.
This effect can be enhanced by decorating your Bundt cake with halved Creme Eggs, allowing the fondant to drip down its high sides. It'll all look pretty messy, but it should: The appeal of this cake is that it looks simultaneously abundant and thrown together. Bundt cakes aren't the only cakes you can do this with, either. Even a simple sponge cake or chocolate loaf can be made indescribably delicious by tucking Creme Eggs into the batter or using them as a topper.
12. Use Creme Eggs in a pavlova
Whether you believe that pavlovas are an Australian or a New Zealand-pioneered invention (and you'll find some pretty passionate voices on each side of that argument), there's one thing that most of us can agree on: This dessert is almost always flavored with fresh fruit and berries. In our opinion, though, throwing a Creme Egg or two into the mix will only ever improve them. Creme Eggs work particularly well with pavlovas thanks to their fondant, which pairs effortlessly with the meringue, mirroring its silkiness and chewiness. The chocolate, meanwhile, works wonders with the whipped cream, giving it extra depth and flavor.
In case you were wondering if you'd miss the fruit when using Creme Eggs, though, never fear. By throwing some chopped bananas in with the eggs, you can honor pavlova's fruity origins and give the dessert some added freshness. We recommend scattering a combination of chopped Creme Eggs and bananas over a nest of just-cooked meringue and then topping it all off with a drizzle of melted chocolate. For added effect, you can make this out of some melted Creme Eggs or use melted dark chocolate to give the dessert some mellower notes.
13. Chop them up to flavor your pancakes
In our opinion, few foods lend themselves to being topped with delicious ingredients like pancakes do. Seasonal celebrations like Easter present you with the perfect opportunity to vary your normal toppings with something more exciting, like Creme Eggs. For an extra-special Easter brunch, halve a Creme Egg and place it on top of your stack of pancakes. If you pop it in the microwave beforehand for a few seconds, the fondant will become more pliable, dripping down the pancakes' sides and flavoring every mouthful.
Pancakes aren't the only brunch food you can do this with, either. Waffles, French toast, and even crepes are made so much better when topped with a Creme Egg. If you're using waffles, the fondant will pool in its rivets, creating intense bursts of flavor as you eat. If you want to turn things up to the next level, try placing chopped pieces of Creme Egg into a stuffed French toast. You can then finish it off by sprinkling chocolate shavings or chocolate sugar sprinkles over the top, for a morning meal you won't forget in a hurry.
14. Make them into a dip
If you haven't tried making a dip out of Cadbury Creme Eggs, you're missing out. This dip blows savory kinds like hummus or baba ghanoush out of the water and is perfect served with fruit slices, cookies, or pretzels. To make a Creme Egg dip, you just need to melt Creme Eggs in a microwaveable bowl and then mix them with cream cheese, marshmallow fluff, and Cool Whip. You then add a few chopped-up, unmelted Mini Creme Eggs, stir them through, and then chill until you're ready to serve.
The joy of this dip is in the interplay of textures. While the softer ingredients give it a smoothness, the little chunks of chocolate add some pleasing crunch and keep the flavor from being too uniform. Using cream cheese also helps to prevent this dip from becoming too intensely sugary, adding a touch of tang and a more neutral creamy note. While this dip works well just scooped into a bowl and ladled up with your choice of edible vessel, it would also be great as an icing for cakes or muffins or spooned over some chocolate or berry-flavored ice cream. Remember as well to add a little flair with your serving style: Crack a Creme Egg and place it on the dip as a topping, or spoon the dip into a halved chocolate Easter egg as a vessel.