It's fast approaching the Easter weekend so if you've yet to prepare a treat or, indeed, have run out of treats, we think that this air fryer Creme Egg recipe will hit the mark.
The shops are full of Cadbury Creme Eggs and other chocolatey delights. Whilst the thought alone about air frying chocolate could be a messy one, have you ever considered wrapping your Creme Eggs in pastry and cooking them in the best air fryer? It’s a trend that was originally started by a TikTok user last year, so this year we're revisiting it.
Our mouths were watering after watching the video – it certainly takes tucking into a pain au chocolat in the morning to the next level. So we decided to give it a go… after all, the Instagram reel makes the recipe look simple as well as delicious.
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Air fryer Creme Egg recipe
@boredoflunch ♬ Rollin' (feat. Burna Boy) - MIST
This recipe by TikTok user @boredoflunch went viral last year. It's achieved 32.7k likes and 18.2k shares which is cracking. We saw it, and gave it a go.
Air fryer Creme Egg ingredients
- Creme Egg
- Pre-made croissant dough
- 1 beaten egg
Air fryer Creme Egg method
It's not quite as easy as it looks. To start, open the tube of pre-made croissant dough, which you can buy in most grocery stores, and roll it out – our dough had perforations that made it easy to cut into evenly-sized triangles.
Next, unwrap the Creme Egg and roll one of the triangles of pastry around it. Then brush the top of the pastry with beaten egg, set your air fryer to 338F / 170C and cook for eight minutes. When cooked, the pastry should be crisp, and the chocolate and fondant of the egg should ooze out as you cut into it.
However that wasn’t quite the case for us. The pastry was evenly browned on top, but the sides and the bottom weren't as we hadn’t turned the egg part-way through cooking (more on that below). The egg had also stuck to the crisper plate of our air fryer, and when we did manage to dislodge it we found that some of the filling had leaked out during cooking, creating a sticky mess. And when we cut into our creation we discovered that some of the pastry wasn’t fully cooked.
It was a setback for sure, but by this point our craving for sweet, chocolate-filled pastries simply had to be satisfied, so we decided to persevere with the recipe, and using our previous experience of air-fryer experimentation – specifically, using an air fryer to create fried chicken to rival KFC, and discovering that we could make Krispy Kreme style doughnuts in an air fryer – we tweaked the process to (hopefully) give a better result...
1. Use parchment paper in the air fryer
As mentioned, our first attempt at a croissant-wrapped Creme Egg stuck to the crisper plate, which left a mess for us to clean up – but more importantly, it meant that when we tried to remove the egg, some of the delicate pastry was pulled away from the chocolate, allowing the chocolate and the fondant filling to ooze out – we’re all for oozing chocolate, but we'd prefer it ooze after we've taken it out of our air fryer.
To get around this issue we placed a small square of parchment paper underneath the egg to stop it sticking. We employed a similar trick when we made French Toast in an air fryer, which prevented the French Toast from sticking, and made it easy to clean the crisper plate, so it made sense to do the same thing here.
We made sure the parchment paper was only slightly bigger than the egg so that it didn’t cover too many of the holes in the crisper plate – these are the key to the air-frying process, as they allow the hot air to circulate around the cooking cavity.
2. Increase the temperature
Boredoflunch recommends a cooking temperature of 338F / 170C, and a duration of eight minutes. While we had no issues with the time, we thought the suggested temperature seemed a little low – but as we’re keen never to second-guess a cook’s recipe, we continued. However, after our first attempt, we were convinced that our hunch was right.
Over the past year, we’ve been on a mission to discover the best things to cook in an air fryer, turning our hand to everything from fries to cinnamon rolls, and one thing we’ve learned is that, as a general rule, the temperature required for cooking a dish a standard oven is around what you should be using with the air fryer.
The cooking instructions for the croissant dough suggested 356F / 180C, so we cranked the temperature up for our second attempt, in a bid to ensure that the croissant dough was fully cooked and we’d get crispy, flaky pastry rather than claggy dough.
3. Ensure the egg is evenly coated in dough (and turn the egg)
One thing Boredoflunch doesn’t highlight is that the pastry surrounding the Creme Egg should be an even thickness all the way around, which will help to ensure it’s evenly cooked. So we spent a few extra moments smoothing out the dough until it looked to be the same thickness all aound the egg.
Many air fryers, including the Instant Vortex Plus, which currently tops our round-up of the best air fryers you can buy, have a 'shake reminder' function. This provides an audible, and in some cases visual, alert, prompting you to remove the frying basket, and shake or turn the food part-way through cooking to help ensure it’s evenly cooked.
Boredoflunch doesn’t mention whether the egg should be turned, but we decided it would probably help, and it certainly couldn’t hurt.
We’re lovers of all things caramel, and in our opinion, there’s nothing better than mixing it with chocolate – and with nine million Cadbury Caramel bars sold every year in the UK, we’re clearly not alone. So as well as wrapping a Creme Egg in croissant dough, we did the same with a Cadbury Caramel egg.
Having made our tweaks to the cooking process there was nothing left to do other than get frying…
Air fryer Creme Egg recipe verdict
After the cooking time elapsed (and having turned the eggs halfway through), we opened the air fryer drawer and were thrilled at what we found. Both eggs were evenly browned, and the greaseproof ensured that we were able to remove them easily from the air fryer.
Next came the moment of truth – we sliced into the eggs, and it was clear that the pastry was properly cooked, with crisp, flaking layers, while the filling oozed out like lava flowing from a chocolate-and-fondant volcano.
And so on to the all-important taste test. In our opinion the Creme Egg version is slightly too sickly, and half of one was more than enough. The Cadbury Caramel Egg version, on the other hand, was the perfect blend of sweetness and creaminess for our taste buds.
You may want to tweak the process for yourself, and adjust the cooking time and temperature for your particular air fryer – and in our opinion the results are well worth a little trial and error. If you want to indulge your chocolate egg cravings in a slightly different way, and create an irresistable Easter treat, look no further.
