Today on Food on Fridays it’s all about eggs.  Easter eggs, that is.

First up, the shaped-like-an-egg Easter cake:

Egg-shaped Easter Cake

Although it looked cute, the plain yellow cake taste was bland. Well, except for the green thing under the bunny face and flower: that was marzipan, so at least it had some flavor. The bunny head and the flower were just hard sugar and not flavored as far as I could tell. So, this wasn’t our favorite. Dare I say it was not egg-xactly what we were looking for in a cake? As it were.

Then there was the fried-egg shaped chocolate candy:

“Fried egg” chocolate

These pieces of chocolate were flat on the back side, with the white and orange things on top to represent the whites and yolk of an egg, in a way that said sunny-side up fried egg to me. Although I guess this is just a variation on what those Cadbury creme eggs would look like if you sliced them open, except the Cadbury ones are at least egg-shaped, not flat on the back.

BTW, eggs around here typically have bright orange yolks, as opposed to ones in North America which are yellow. Click here to see my previous mention of this on the blog. So, the striking orange color of the yolk in our chocolate “fried egg” is the color of real egg yolks here.

But I digress. Taste-wise, these, too, were a bit of a disappointment.  The chocolate, which I thought was handmade at the place where we got these, did not rise above mediocre. The “white and yolk” topping was, in a word, odd.  Neither of us could really identify the flavor that lurked in each bite.

But as I was eating it, I was struck with the sensation that I’d had something like this before. Then it hit me: the consistency was that of “traditional molded mints”, something I hadn’t had in almost 20 years.

Let me explain. Chris and I were living in Iowa 20 years ago when we decided to get married. And in that part of the U.S., a wedding isn’t a wedding without “traditional molded mints.” Seriously.  I  ran across this article today that even poses the tongue-in-cheek question “Is a Nebraska wedding even legal without molded mints?”  If you live in Nebraska or Iowa, you’d never need to ask that questions, though, because of course one always has traditional molded mints at a wedding.

But Chris and I both grew up on the East Coast, and we had no clue what the banquet hall coordinator in Iowa City meant when she asked us who was providing the traditional molded mints for our reception. Luckily, not only did a friend (from Iowa) know, but her mother turned out to be somewhat of a pro at making them. She gave them to us as a wedding present, which I guess means our wedding was definitely legit – the mints sealed the deal, after all.

So, what are these things? Traditionally a molded mint is made from cream cheese, powdered sugar, and peppermint oil for flavoring. Chris remembers the traditional molded mints as being good.  Since I’m allergic to peppermint oil, our friend’s mother made a special tray of them for me that were otherwise flavored, so the ones I ate weren’t “mints” in their traditional flavoring.  Now, I appreciated the thoughtfulness of our friend’s gift, and her mother’s skill at making the pretty, colorful candies that were all skillfully arranged on the trays. But I will confess that I have only a dim memory in the back of my mind of biting into one of the mints, and what I recall is a soft and mushy texture with an vague flavor that I couldn’t quite pin down.

I had forgotten all about even that until we had these fried egg chocolates on Sunday, which were also soft, mushy with vague flavor of something. Maybe these are traditional molded mint eggs. Hmm.  ‘Nuff said, as far as I’m concerned.

Anyway, in other egg traditions here, for weeks before Easter, all the bakeries have bowls sitting on the counter filled with colorfully decorated hard boiled eggs.  I forgot to buy a couple to take photos of. However, here’s a photo a friend took that include them in photo that juxtaposes symbols of different seasons:

German Easter eggs (photo by T. Trippel)

Compare the difference between those and some homemade ones made by one of Chris’ students:

Home made decorated hard boiled eggs

I’m not sure if it’s clear from the photos, but the bakery ones are brightly colored and have a shinier finish.  In person, all the hard boiled eggs for sale at the bakeries look like they’ve been covered in a lacquer coating, which IMHO doesn’t make them look too appealing as something to eat.  But it’s a tradition around here to make them look like they have a hard, shiny shell on the outside. It’s a mystery to me why they do that. Chris commented I could call that a hard boiled mystery.

Right.

OK, well, before I wind up with egg on my face after too many egg-traordinary puns, I’ll end today’s Food on Friday post with another photo of those “fried eggs” chocolates.  I call this photo “Egg on a Face Plate.”

Enjoy.

Egg on a Face Plate