Tall deviled eggs piled so high with a green egg yolk filling to make them look like Christmas Trees! Deviled eggs are one of the best foods of all time, and a holiday staple. I thought, they already taste like the holidays, what if they looked like the holidays too! I used spinach in the filling to get that perfect Christmas tree green on these. My secret weapon though, a pinch of dehydrated mashed potato flakes! The flakes gave the filing enough body to stand up tall like a tree!
The inspiration for this recipe
I was making some guacamole deviled eggs a while back and I overfilled one of them as a joke. Looking back at the photo the other day, I noticed that it kind of reminded me of a christmas tree! I did some searching and saw a bunch of great attempts at making deviled eggs look like christmas trees, like these cuties, but none really fit the way I wanted to do it, so I set out to try it myself!
Cutting the eggs
Typically when making deviled eggs I cut the egg the traditional long way. For these I wanted the egg to look like a planter for the christmas tree so I thought it would be better to cut them the short way. I had seen this method at a restaurant before, but never tried it myself.
The old way would be to cut it along the red line, instead I did it on the green line. This ended up being easy enough, the main challenge is figuring out where the yolk is and making sure to cut it close to where the yolk center is. I got it right most of the time, but even when I missed it was OK. Plus I did a few extra eggs just in case, and so that the filling would have plenty of yolk
I read later that you can lay the eggs on their sides overnight in the fridge and the yolk will center itself better.
Ingredients
- 7 large eggs
- 2 tablespoons butter
- 2 cloves garlic sliced thin
- 5 oz baby spinach
- 1/3 cup mayo
- 1 tablespoon mustard
- 1/2 lemon (juice)
- 1/2 teaspoon smoked paprika
- 1/4 teaspoon hot sauce
- 2 tablespoons dehydrated potato flakes
- 1 red fresno chili pepper minced
- 1 yellow bell pepper cut into small stars
- parmesan cheese
Instructions
Cook the eggs
- Bring water to a boil and add the eggs. Cook them at a hard boil for 9 and a half minutes. While they cook, fill up a bowl with ice and water. Scoop the eggs out of the boiling water and add them to the ice bath to cool.
- Peel the eggs and rinse them. Slice them in half the short way so that each half is round, opposite of the traditional deviled egg style. Try to cut it so you are cutting the yolk in half. It can be hard to judge where the yolk is but it is ok if you don’t slice it exactly in half. Refer to photos above for help.
- Put the yolks in a bowl and set aside in the fridge until ready to use. Cut the bottom tips off the eggs so they can stand up straight, being careful not to cut too much or you will pierce the cavity. There are a few extra egg whites just in case. Set the whites aside in the fridge until ready to use.
Cook the spinach
- You can start this step as the eggs are cooking or cooling.
- Add the butter to a frying pan over medium heat. Add the garlic as the butter starts melting. Stir in the spinach and cook about 5 minutes until the spinach is wilted and moisture is evaporated from the pan. Remove from heat and allow to cool fully before using
Blend the filling
- In a blender add the spinach mixture, egg yolks, mayo, mustard, lemon juice, paprika, hot sauce, and potato flakes. Blend until smooth. Put the filling into the fridge to cool fully.
- Stir the mixture and if it doesn’t seem thick enough to stand tall on it’s own, add a little more potato flakes and stir to combine.
- Transfer to a piping bag with a star tip.
Finish the eggs
- Place the egg whites on a platter. This recipe makes 14 egg whites just in case you mess a few up. The filling is intended to only fill 10 – 12.
- Pipe the filling into the egg whites, bobbing the piping tip up and down slightly to form the tree shape and gradient. Go as tall as you feel confident being able to.
- Use two toothpicks to add 5 or 6 pieces of diced red pepper to each tree as decoration. Top with the star of yellow pepper
- Finally, make it “snow” parmesan cheese by grating it with a microplane grater right over the deviled egg trees. Serve
