It’s so easy to make your own Easter gifts, especially when it involves chocolate! My girls decided they wanted to give homemade chocolate eggs this year, so I bought an egg mould; loads of chocolate and an assortment of lollies. Though instead of making whole eggs, we decided that a half egg filled with sweets would be easier to make.

What you need for each half egg

• 15 cm egg mould
• 100 g dark, milk or white chocolate
• Sweets or small Easter eggs
• White chocolate for decorating
• Food colours for decorating
• Cellophane and ribbon for wrapping

Using 100 grams of chocolate for only a half egg mould is a lot of chocolate, but I wanted to make sure that it was thick enough that it wasn’t going to break easily and besides who doesn’t want to get heaps of chocolate!!

Melt the chocolate in the microwave using two 30 second bursts and stir in between. Pour the chocolate into the mould and swirl it around to coat the half mould completely. Place it in the fridge. After 5 minutes, re-swirl the chocolate around and return it to the fridge. Repeat until the chocolate is solid. This ensures that the chocolate is evenly spread in the mould rather than having a huge solid amount at the bottom of the egg.

After the chocolate is solid (wait for at least 30 minutes) upend the mould and the chocolate egg half should easily slip out. If it doesn’t come out easily, give the plastic a bit of a twist or stretch to break the seal.

If you want to add extra decorations, and who wouldn’t; melt some white chocolate to drizzle over the top. My girls decided pretty pastel colours were needed, so we added blue, green, purple and pink food colour dyes. This step isn’t necessary, unless you want to ‘prettify’ your gift!

Return the decorated egg to the fridge to fully set.

Fill your half egg with sweets or small Easter eggs. You can tailor this if you know that your giftee likes a particular type of sweet. My Mum really likes dark chocolate, aniseed rings and black jelly beans and a friend loves Cadbury’s creme eggs…too easy!

Wrap in clear cellophane tied with a pretty bow.

Happy Easter!