Fun with Bento: molded eggs

Egg molds are a lot of fun, and are fantastic, not only for bento lunches, where flair is fun, but also for other things, like salads, barbecues, or times when you want to surprise someone with a little something special.

To use these I buy extra large eggs.

Boil the eggs as you usually do to make them hard-boiled. Remove eggs you'll use from their shells as quickly as you can (I keep dipping my fingers in hot water to keep them from burning too badly). Then you place the shelled egg into the mold, close the mold, and then immerse the egg molds into ice-water for 10 minutes.

When you remove the egg, it will assume the shape of the mold you've used! This morning, I made a bear, a bunny rabbit, a heart and a star. The star is in the picture above. I cut it in half, and placed half in my daughter's bento box. The other half I placed in a salad. (The star actually looks like a flower, so you could use it for one!)

I've found that it's important just to use freshly-hot eggs. When I tried to make a second set of molds from the original batch of eggs, the eggs had cooled too much after 10 minutes and didn't want to conform to the mold.