BEAUTY & THE BEARD: Homemade Reese's Peanut Butter Eggs

Easter is April 8th. Apparently that's really early?

Well, I'm prepared folks, let me tell you.

Michael LOVES Reese's Peanut Butter Eggs. Like, borderline addiction. He always gets them in his Easter basket, but I know no amount his lovely mother sends to him will be enough- so I took it upon myself to make a copycat recipe.

Holy crap, they turned out good. Michael says they're even better than the originals...and the thing about the dear Beard is that although he's thoughtful and sweet- he often doesn't think before he speaks about my cooking/baking. Case and point: I iced some of them with a simple sugar frosting- and one day he said "Will you get me one of the eggs you made out of the freezer? And scrape that icing stuff off? I don't really like it"

Thus, you can trust his judgement about how good they are.

mmm-mmmm.

WHAT YOU'LL NEED TO MAKE 'EM (makes around 16 eggs):
-2 cups powdered sugar
-2 tablespoons milk
-3/4 cup creamy peanut butter
-1/8 cup butter (2 Tbsp)
- 1 1/2 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips (although you could use dark chocolate..mm...)
- 1 1/2 teaspoons shortening (crisco)
OPTIONAL ICING:
- 1/2 cup powdered sugar
- 1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1 teaspoon milk (may need more, just start there!)
- food coloring

HOW TO MAKE IT HAPPEN:

Step 1: Mix together the peanut butter, powdered sugar, and butter together. Add your milk one tablespoon at a time- mixing thoroughly. Once your dough is easy to work with and doesn't crumble apart in your hands, you know you've done it right.

Step 2: Mold your dough into little egg shapes. As you can tell, I completely failed at this. Totally not uniform at all. Throw them in the freezer for an hour to chill.

Step 3: While your eggs are chilling, mix together your icing. Add a teaspoon of milk at a time, and once it's the consistency of regular lotion, you know you're good to go. Color it whatever hue(s) you want, and fill it into a ziplock bag to use for decoration later.

Step 4: Throw your chocolate chips into a double boiler with the shortening and stir until melted. You could melt them in the microwave- but I always use the wrong heat and the chocolate seizes up. Not cool.

Step 5: Begin to cover your eggs in chocolate. I just stabbed them with a fork, and dipped and swirled until completely covered. Throw them in the freezer to cool for another hour before icing.

Step 6: If you choose to ice them, simple cut a tiny hole in the ziplock bag full of icing and go crazy! (Although, according to Michael, the icing should be left off....)