We did it!

Adorable molded egg success! And we learned a couple things:

1.) start the eggs in boiling water - not in cold water. It makes them 3x easier to peel while warm.
2.) don't drop them in the boiling water, lower them in with a spoon to avoid cracking the shells.
3.) eggs taste better when they are adorable (and soaked in a soy/sake marinade for a couple hours)
4.) don't over-marinate them. the salt will make the whites tough if you leave them in for more than a couple hours.


So the recipe is pretty straight forward.

ADORABLE EGGS

You need at least one of these, some l.o.f.r. eggs, and water.

1. Bring a pot of water to a rolling boil. 
2. lower large l.o.f.r. eggs into the water with a spoon.
3. cook for precisely 6 minutes for a soft yolk.
4. remove eggs with a spoon quickly - place them in a strainer.
5. put the strainer in the sink and peel the eggs under cool running water. the idea is not to shock them with ice water, but to make them just cool enough to handle.( the nice thing about using a strainer is you can just drop the shells into it and it makes cleanup so much easier.)
6. get a large bowl of ice water ready.
7. dip the open molds in the ice water - a little bit of cold water in the mold will make things easier later
8. place the warm peeled egg in the mold. (some of the molds were designed for an upright egg, some for a horizontal egg - this is the trial and error part.)
9. close the mold very carefully. if some of the egg white squishes out the side it's okay. Broken yolk is a bad sign though.
10. snap the mold shut and immerse it in your ice water bowl. 
11. let it cool for at least 10 minutes before popping it out and admiring your adorable delicious egg. 
12. at this point you can choose to marinate it or not.

Any damaged or not-pretty-enough eggs can be greedily eaten by husband non-pouchers while still warm, or saved for egg salad.

Marinade ingredients: (Works great for non-molded hardboiled eggs too!)

light soy sauce / tamari soy

sake

mirin

sriracha

Worcestershire / A1 sauce

a squeeze of lemon juice / lime juice

salt & pepper

rice vinegar

mustard 

mashed garlic

chili oil

sesame oil

basically the salty tasty stuff in condiment jail on your refrigerator door.

Steps: Mix any combination of 3 or 4 of these things that sound good - taste it. 

If the answer is Yes: Cool. Soak your egg for 2 hours. 

If the answer is No: Try again!

We did ours with soy sauce, sake, Worcestershire, and sriracha. Delicious!