We love creating our monthly craft from High Five magazine… so I was a bit dismayed when we saw that this month’s project was decidedly not vegan. Cascarones are confetti-filled eggs, traditionally made in Mexico during Easter and crushed over a friend’s head as a surprise. Although it’s easy to paint or dye wooden eggs for vegan kids, how were we going to make a vegan egg that could crack? With a little advanced planning and some ingenuity, we made it work!

First, I searched online for hollow vegan chocolate eggs, and was rewarded with Peek-a-Boos from No Whey Chocolates. This actually have a little white chocolate chick inside, but still plenty of room for confetti!

It took a few tries before we learned how much pressure was needed to crack the eggs with a butter knife, but we got a small hole in a few of them. Don’t make the hole right at the apex of the oval, or the chocolate egg will cleave in half.

Travis of course needed to do a taste test at this point! I recommend setting aside a few of the eggs for eating, since the ones you’re about to use for the rest of the project won’t remain edible.

Next up we painted our eggs. Since we were painting on chocolate, we used food coloring.

Roll a piece of paper into a funnel, and insert into the opening you’ve made in each egg. Carefully pour in confetti through the funnel.

Finally, we glued a colored piece of tissue paper (pastel, in keeping with the Easter theme!) over the hole we’d made in each egg. Set aside to dry.

Now of course you won’t really want to crush these over a friend’s head – unless you enjoy shampooing chocolate out of your hair!

Instead, I set up a large surface area covered with newspaper and gave Travis a mallet and let him go to town crushing the eggs. Perhaps they weren’t exactly cascarones, but I’m glad we were able to capture the spirit of the craft!

We’ll be hopping toward Easter with a few other crafts this week, so stay tuned!