Allergy Free Chocolate Wowbutter Eggs for Easter

Having grandchildren with life threatening food allergies has required some creative food substitutions in the kitchen.  Holidays are often especially difficult as so many traditional holiday candies are not allergy free.

I decided this year I wanted to make chocolate covered peanut butter eggs for Easter.  WOWBUTTER is a wonderful peanut butter substitute and Enjoy Life makes a variety of great non-dairy chocolate chips.  The recipe I created for chocolate covered "peanut butter" Easter candy uses these great allergy free foods.   For a good butter substitute that is dairy free, I like Fleischmann's unsalted vegetable spread.  The stick variety is great for all types of baking so I try to always have some on hand (most margarines have dairy in them - I didn't know this until I started cooking allergy free for my grandkids, so be careful what margarine you choose if dairy is one of the allergens you want to avoid).  My recipe isn't rocket science, but I thought I'd share it for anyone who may be looking for an allergy free substitute for Reese's Peanut Butter Eggs during the Easter Holiday.

Allergy Free Chocolate WOWBUTTER Easter Eggs

1 lb powdered confectioner's sugar

16 ounce jar of WOWBUTTER

1 stick of Fleischmann's unsalted margarine

1 tsp pure vanilla extract

 9 ounce package of Enjoy Life dark chocolate morsels

1 Tbsp Crisco shortening

Melt the stick of margarine and cream together with sugar, WOWBUTTER, and vanilla.  I used a stand mixer and mixed until completely combined.  Take the mix and roll into egg shapes about an inch and a half to 2 inches long.  Place eggs on wax paper on cookie sheet and freeze for 1 or more hours.

In double boiler, melt chocolate with shortening, stirring until smooth.

Remove eggs from freezer and dip into melted chocolate returning them to the wax paper covered cookie sheet to cool.  I tried using tooth picks for this procedure and did not have a lot of success.  I ended up using my fingers and made a bit of a mess.  Clean up was easy enough, though, so I recommend using your hands as it is much easier to cover the eggs that way.  After the eggs have set for a bit, I drizzled a little extra melted chocolate on top to add a decorative flare - and to hide some of my imperfections.  After the chocolate solidifies, I placed the eggs in small paper cups in a decorative box.  

I made 20 of the chocolate eggs.  In the future I think I will look for the small cupcake paper cups and try this recipe as a WOWBUTTER cup instead of an easter egg.  I'd use a mini cupcake pan instead of a cookie sheet.  I think the WOWBUTTER mix could be shaped into discs and then some of the melted chocolate poured into the paper cups, the discs could then be placed into the cups and covered with more melted chocolate.  I envision this to be somewhat less messy to do than my current egg shaped version.  But overall I am happy with how things turned out.  I will say I didn't have quite enough melted chocolate to cover all of the eggs I made, I had a few left over.  If I was going to try the paper cup version, I'd expect to need two packages of the chocolate chips.

I'm hopeful my grandkids will be happy with these Easter candies.