Thursday 13 April 2017

Neapolitan Easter Crown



If you are looking for something to keep you entertained in the kitchen over Easter, try making a Neapolitan Easter Crown. It's essentially a stuffed pizza crust forming the crown, studded with whole eggs still in their shells and held on by grissini instead of jewels or thorns. It's much easier to do than it sounds or looks.

Make some pizza dough with wholemeal flour and added grated Parmesan cheese and leave to prove for a couple of hours. Meanwhile combine ingredients for the stuffing. You could use any combination of toasted pine nuts, spicy salami, chopped herbs such as basil or parsley, dried tomatoes and grated strong cheeses.


Put aside about 100g of dough. Roll out the rest into a large rectangle and sprinkle the stuffing even over the dough. Roll the dough and stuffing from the long edge and form a log. Brush the dough with olive oil as it rolls over.

Lift the log onto a baking tray and bring the ends together to form a ring. Leave the ring to prove for an hour.


Take the set aside dough and divide into 12. Roll each piece into grissini. Carefully place 6 raw eggs in their shells on top of the stuffed dough ring and secure each of them with two grissini forming a cross over the egg.

Bake the crown for 15 minutes at 160°C then for 40 minutes at 180°C.

I know this isn't a French recipe, but it's a version of a recipe I saw on French Armenian chef Sonia Ezgulian's blog and I made it last Easter for fun.



8 comments:

chm said...

This is very unusual and interesting. While reading, I thought why keep the shell on hard boiled eggs? Later on, I learned the eggs were raw, and that is interesting as
i already said. What is the texture of the baked eggs? Are they just like hard boiled eggs or soft boiled eggs?

melinda said...

I have the same question as chm....how do the eggs come out??

Susan said...

They come out like regular hard-boiled eggs.

Susan said...

See above.

Ken Broadhurst said...

I'm surprised the eggs don't explode! I has be be important to get the oven temperature just right. In the berrichon pâté de Pâques there are hard-boiled eggs but not in their shell.

Autolycus said...

What a palaver, to cook and to eat. I think I'd rather have a simnel cake.

Susan said...

So was I.

Susan said...

I've never made a simnel cake. Perhaps I should give it a go.

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