Deviled Egg Fest

After taking a few weeks off, we're finally back! We have lots more recipes to post in the upcoming weeks. But first, I wanted to share our creation for Easter. We gathered at my aunt's house for Easter dinner, and we brought along an entry for the deviled egg contest. In all, there were seven different recipes. We decided to concentrate most of our creative efforts around presentation. We also included some cute lady bug appetizers that fit the spring theme of our platter.

For the lady bug appetizers, we used a recipe from Taste of Home, with a few adjustments. We spread hummus instead of cream cheese on the crackers, we used black icing for the spots, and we skipped the chive anntenae.

Ingredients

• 10 hard-boiled eggs, peeled
• 1/2 jar beets in vinegar (Watch out. Beets can stain things. Like fingers. And clothes. And especially anything that's white. Like egg whites!)
• your favorite ingredients for mixing with the yolks (We used approximately 1/4 cup mayonnaise, 3/4 tablespoon Dijon mustard, juice from 1 lemon, and 1-2 teaspoons liquid from capers.)
• 1 green onion

Directions

1. Place some of the beet juice and beets in a large glass dish or stain-proof container. Carefully add the whole peeled hard-boiled eggs. Add more beet juice and beets to cover all eggs. Stir if necessary to fully cover eggs.
2. Cover and refrigerate the eggs for 2 days. At least once per day, carefully stir the contents to ensure the eggs are getting full beet juice coverage.

3. Remove each egg from the beet juice, pat dry, slice in half lengthwise, and remove the egg yolks.


4. Stir together the yolks with your favorite mixers. Chill everything until ready to serve.

5. To serve, scoop out the yolk mix into a circle on your serving platter. Out platter isn't stain proof, so we used a circle of parchment paper that we cut to fit the bottom of the platter. Place the egg whites, er, egg purples cut-side down around the yolk. Add a green onion for the stem and leaves.

Include a small knife so guests can spread some of the yolk mix on the egg purples.

Here's the appetizer table full with all the fun contributions.

She said

I loved the way these turned out. The beet juice gave the egg whites a slight beet/vinegar flavor, and the color really surprised us. We had no idea the color would end up so rich—perfect for flowers.

He said

These eggs were fun to make and to taste, but we collectively made a big tactical error. Our family had decided to hold a deviled egg “contest.” (Since we had no deviled egg experience, we decided to compete on color; we won!) While this helps explain the wide assortment of eggs on the table in the last picture, it also left us completely disinterested in trying any variants for a week or two. It was a lot of fun to see all the ways people served deviled eggs, and I really enjoyed the taste ours had. You could just barely taste the beets, and the filling had a wonderful tang. I would totally make these again...once I'm ready for more eggs.