Cadbury Creme Scotch eggs

Jesus would have wanted these, right?

Hello, beautiful clowns!

How’s it going, everybody? I hope you’re all doing okay, because I love you guys and I think about you all the time. Please take a deep breath and relax for five minutes as I regale you with more harrowing tales from my kitchen.

Last week, I ran a cast iron pan through my dishwasher multiple times, and let it sit outside overnight on our back porch while it snowed, then melted. The pan transformed from a uniform black color to a mottled orange almost instantly, which is the true indicator that it was seasoned properly. I don’t understand why so many people got upset at me!

As we’ve reached mid-March, winter has eased up significantly. Much of the snow outside is disappearing, if not completely gone here in Chicago. And that means all the seasonal candy shelves have transformed into a blossom of pastel colors, signaling that Easter is on the way. The arrival of Easter also means the arrival of a classic, Cadbury Creme Eggs. And supposedly, Jesus!!!

Last year, I made Cadbury Egg salad sandwiches, which riled up more than a few people. And this year, I figured I’d continue deeper along that journey by making Cadbury Creme Scotch eggs.

Before I go any further, I’d like to give a shoutout to my friend Dana Salls Cree, who is the founder of a local ice cream shop called Pretty Cool Ice Cream.

Today’s idea came as a suggestion from Dana. I visited her store to drop off a few things one day and we were throwing around some ideas, when she suddenly said the magic words, “Cadbury Scotch eggs.” I stopped dead in my tracks and immediately thought to myself, I have to try this. So, everyone, go visit Dana’s shop when you can, buy a bunch of her delicious ice cream bars (seriously, they’re amazing).

If you’ve never had a Scotch egg, they’re pretty fantastic. They’re a hard or soft boiled egg wrapped in ground sausage, dipped in breadcrumbs, then deep fried. So today, I’d wrap a Cadbury Creme egg in Italian sausage, dip it into panko, and deep fry it. Of course we need a sauce, so I thought I’d melt my personal archnemeses, Marshmallow Peeps, into a dijon mustard and mayo dipping mixture.

First of all, I’d like to show all of you a secret shopping technique I use every time I go to the grocery store.

Whenever I do our shopping at the supermarket, I always look for these big yellow stickers that say “Manager’s Special.” There’s always a huge discount on these meat products, because if they’re not sold that day, the grocery store has to throw them out. I like to call those packages “secret meat” since they’re almost always tucked away in some sketchy looking corner of the meat display.

As you can see, we have not died from eating secret meat yet. I mean, you see what I eat on the newsletter, if my own cooking hasn’t killed me, I’m going to live forever.

Before I started on the Scotch eggs, I decided to begin with the Peeps mustard sauce.

Harvey sat and introduced himself to one of the marshmallow birds, and they hit it off pretty good. Turns out they’re distant relatives.

Then I bit off his newfound cousin’s head.

Harvey vowed to have his revenge on me. If the newsletter mysteriously stops showing up in your inbox, you’ll know that Harvey had something to do with my disappearance.

Also, Peeps still suck a tremendous amount of ass.

I tossed the whole flock, including the headless one, into a small saucepan.

Then I added a touch of water, turned on the stove, and dissolved the little marshmallow birdies.

Something fun I learned was that the little eyes melt last, which is kind of hilarious.

Watching them float around in all that liquid was an unexpected treat.

Then I whisked in a little mustard and mayo to create a tart and sweet dipping sauce, because I am a fucking genius.

I let the dipping sauce sit off to the side while the real fun began.

I unwrapped a few Cadbury eggs and covered them in the secret meat, which I extracted from the sausage casings.

Then I dipped the sausage-covered Cadbury eggs in flour, eggs, and panko breadcrumbs.

If you want to become a cool food writer like me, you should always use panko breadcrumbs for breading stuff, because they have an appealing crunchy texture.

You can then go around telling everyone that they are superior to regular old boring breadcrumbs. The fact that you even have an opinion on breadcrumbs will intimidate people, and you will be applauded for your expertise. Then, when you join our secret cabal of food writers, we will all stand around solemnly nodding at you with knowing glances. Afterwards, one of us will hand you a cup full of pig’s blood, which you must drink, and your initiation ceremony will be complete. You’re one of us now.

Anyway, panko breadcrumbs are fantastic!

These things are weirdly cute, if you’re into breaded testicle-shaped objects.

I don’t recommend you deep fry testicles unless they aren’t your own, however.

I let the Cadbury Scotch eggs do their thing in my Dutch oven. There’s something pretty soothing about listening to stuff fry. What is it the kids call it? ASMR? Those are the weird videos where people whisper gibberish, and scrape their fingernails on chalkboards, right? Now that reminds me of my own personal food writing initiation rites. Oh, the memories!

Once the Cadbury Creme Scotch eggs had turned a respectable brown color, I gave them a little flip.

At one point, one of the eggs started spewing a steady stream of bubbles, indicating that it had sprung some sort of leak. So I frantically removed them from the oil. I had a feeling that if all the chocolate started melting out I was about to have an environmental disaster on my hands. The world has enough disasters on its hands now anyway.

Okay, so maybe I’m not the best at breading and frying stuff.

The Scotch egg on the left looked pretty sad. All the breadcrumbs had floated off its ass end in the oil while it was busy doing ASMR stuff.

I spread a generous spoonful of urine-colored marshmallow Peep dijon mustard sauce on a plate, split open the Cadbury Creme Scotch eggs, and arranged them artfully on a plate.

I just reread that last sentence. I’m sorry.

They resembled weird oysters, in a way. The chocolate eggshells melted inside the hot sausage, and the filling inside the Cadbury Creme Eggs had become a fucked up molten mixture of hot fondant and food coloring. I just reread that last sentence too, and again, I’m sorry.

I swiped one of the halves through the mustard sauce and took a big fat bite. Then I came to the horrifying realization that these…were actually pretty good. I know, I can’t believe I’m saying that either. At first you get the overwhelming sweetness from the Cadbury Creme Egg with the molten chocolate spreading across your mouth, and as you chew, the sweetness dissipates into a weirdly satisfying mouthful of salty and fatty sausage. The mustard Peep sauce, though sweet, was sharp enough to cut through the rich ground up pork and chocolate, and holy crap is that a combination of consecutive words.

We’ve got a long while until Easter this year, which means you all have plenty of time to make some of these in praise of Jesus’ resurrection. If the dude comes back this year (at this rate never say never), make sure to hand him a few of these. He will be initiated into the food writer circle and we can all nod at each other and throw panko breadcrumbs into each others faces.

Then the real fireworks will begin.

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Thank you for joining me on my Cadbury Creme Scotch egg journey. Don’t forget to visit Pretty Cool Ice Cream if you’re around Chicago, and also don’t forget to share this post on social media, since it helps grow the newsletter (seriously, do it!):

And if you haven’t become a paid subscriber yet, why don’t you sign up? You’ll get all sorts of cool perks like exclusive paid posts a few times a month, plus you’ll unlock full access to the archives at foodisstupid.substack.com. If all of you signed up for a paid subscription (yes, you), I could do this full time, which means this newsletter would reach new and even more dazzling and repulsive heights.

For those of you who do join the elite crew on a paid-subscribers journey, later this week I’ll be turning those weird chocolate marshmallow eggs (the ones that come in egg cartons) into a deviled version, which is exactly what you want to celebrate at Easter. Devils.

As always, I love you all, and I’ll hop into some of your inboxes soon. Be kind to each other, okay?