How to make Bollywood Chocolate Easter Eggs

You've heard of Boiled Eggs...well these are Bollied Eggs: chocolate Easter eggs with a Bollywood theme. Completely edible, I made them by sticking edible picture onto chocolate eggs, then decorated them with edible glitter, edible gemstones, edible flowers, edible glue and even edible paint which I got from my local craft store Hobbycraft.

How to make your own Bollywood Easter eggs

Materials you'll need to make Bollywood chocolate eggs

First up, choose which stars you want to immortalise in chocolate and save the images as jpg files. I emailed my images to a UK based company called Icing Pictures. You send them the images you want printed, they print them onto edible icing and post them back to you. It's a really easy service, they even re-size the images for you. I had six images printed onto one sheet of A4 and it cost £9.99 including postage and packaging. I'm guessing this service exists in other countries - even your local bakery might be able to help. 

Edible images, cut out 

Next up decide on your eggs. The easiest method is to buy ready made eggs, or if you're feeling adventurous you can melt chocolate, pour into a mould and make your own eggs. I tried this method and discovered that a) you need to use a lot of chocolate as when you melt down a bar, you're not left with much and b) I couldn't get the eggs to come out of the moulds easily. If you're already a chocolate maker you may know the knack, but after ending up with broken shells I decided to stick with the easy option and buy the eggs.

Chocolate egg-making fail

Apply the image to the egg. Instructions for the brand of edible picture you use may vary, but the type I bought involved cutting it down to size... 

peeling off the backing and wetting the back with a little water...

...then smoothing it onto the chocolate shell. It's a delicate operation so be patient. Too much water and the image will disintegrate and too much smoothing and it will erode off, so practise a few times before you go through with any final designs.

Once the image is on, the fun part begins: the decorating. 
Here are some ideas.

The Item Girl egg

Bollywood movies wouldn't be the same without a song and a dance. The most innovative and best-loved Item Girl in history is Helen, a cabaret star who starred in numerous movies in the 60s and 70s. She was one of a kind, with great style, so I created an elaborate, colourful, vintage inspired egg embellished with sugar flowers.

The Bejewelled Devdas egg

When it was released in 2002 Devdas starring former Miss World Aishwarya Rai-Bachchan was the most expensive film made in Bollywood history, costing over $7million. Lavish in every way, from the extraordinary costumes to the grand, colourful sets, I painted this egg in edible gold/copper paint then stuck on edible jelly jewels held in place with icing pens. I also outlined the image with icing spots.


The Simple Salu egg

Affectionately known as Salu, Salman Khan is my favourite of all the Khans in the filmi fraternity. He has incredible charisma on the screen and I always look forward to his films for their entertainment value. I kept this one simple with a touch of icing - I was going to apply silver balls but decided they just weren't needed in the end. He alone holds the attention. 

The Randeepian egg

I'm a Randeepian and proud - a dedicated follower and fan of actor Randeep Hooda, one of the most popular actors of the moment and undoubtedly the hottest, hence the reason I positioned him inside an iced heart and added white chocolate hearts which I decorated with edible glitter and icing - one I can't wait to take a bite into!

The Blockbuster egg

Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge is the most famous Bollywood movie in history and one of the best. Released in 2015, 20 years on it's still playing in cinemas - no other film can claim that. The leads are played by mega stars Shah Rukh Khan and Kajol, and this is a classic film poster shot. 


Not a Bollywood fan? You can get any image printed onto edible paper from pop stars to pets. 

Top tips

• The icing pens take around 24 hours to dry so make them in plenty of time before you need to give one as a gift.
• While decorating the egg, sit it in an egg cup as that way you can access all sides of it easily.
• If you are giving them as a gift try placing them in cellophane and tie up with ribbon.

Materials

My images were printed at www.icingpictures.co.uk.

All other materials used for this project were from my local branch of Hobbycraft:
Sugar flowers, edible glitter, icing tubes, edible paint, chocolate hearts, edible gemstones.

The chocolate eggs and giant green and yellow iced spots on the DDLJ eggs were from Asda, but you'll find all of the above online or in cake supplies shops. 

Happy Bollied Egg Making!

Oscar's 2016: Best and Worst Outfits & That Gold Snakeskin Dress

I wasn't intending to blog about The Oscars but I consumed so much media about it yesterday, from the moment I turned on the TV and saw Red Carpet interviews over breakfast, to during the day, when every time I glanced at social media I saw 'That Dress'....the Gold Dress by Tom Ford, worn by Margot Robbie, which 'looks like an Oscar' itself. 

It doesn't just look like an award statue though, the gold snake print fabric she's wearing is not too dissimilar to the gold snakeskin dress I wore on the Red Carpet for the Asian Media Awards back in October 2015. Hmmmm....has someone been copying my style?

TRENDS

Pluging necklines were the biggest Oscars trend this year with the majority of women walking the red carpet wearing dresses that drew attention to their cleavage. Personally I think my own gold dress with less skin on show, is far classier. Not that I'm against showing cleavage, it makes you feel amazing when you have a decent dress and a bit of boob showing, but it is sad that so many women feel they had to do this on the one day they'll get photographed most in their life. 

It's a sorry state of affairs that women need to show their skin while the men are in dapper suits, to get noticed in their careers. The biggest reason it's so important to dress well at The Oscars is that an actor/actress gets noticed, and cast in their next role but why is baring skin so important for this? The Oscar's have been going for 88 years and still this is what women are expected to do. Women who wore outfits that weren't as revealing were told they look dowdy and old fashioned - because modernity is all about looking semi naked right?

Choosing what one is wearing to The Oscars is clearly a big deal. Everyone in attendance will have faced every fashion dilemma going when it comes to choosing their outfit ...but some made much better decisions than others.

I won't di-sect every single outfit (you can do that on Google, there's enough opinions and photos out there to see what people are saying,) I'm just going to comment on what I think was the best outfit and the one that was a real disappointment...

Dress: Armani Prive

BEST OUTFIT: Cate Blanchette

Cate's was more than just the best outfit, it's the overall look. Every single element compliments her, the hair and make-up are equally as important. The the dress has character and personality and the colour is original and suits her complexion. It's the perfect dress for 'Cate.'

Dress by Zuhair Murad

MOST DISAPPOINTING OUTFIT: Priyaka Chopra

I LOVE PC as an actress, she's one of Bollywood's finest. Previously a model, her early acting career was pretty bad, but she's grown so much into a natural, intelligent and creative actress who's give some incredible performances. 

Despite this being the 88th Academy Awards there is a huge lack of South Asians represented at them. (Don't even get me started on the fact Bollywood films don't make it into the international category).

Priyanka being at the Oscars wasn't just her elevating her career, whether she liked it or not, she was representing Indians on a global scale. Ok that may sound unfair but she does carry some responsibility as an ambassador, especially as she was on the stage handing out an award. Even though she identifies as being part-American - she studied there, launched her pop career there and recently starred in US serial Quantico - the biggest success in her career has been starring in Indian cinema. 

In that world there are some incredible fashion designers, and she herself has worn some absolutely gorgeous colourful couture work - the kinds of designs Western audiences don't get much exposure to.

This was an opportunity to show the best in Asian fashion to the world and she chose to turn up in a simple, safe white dress with hair pulled back into a pony tail - which to me is the opposite of Cate's look - bland, and with zero personality. 

Priyanka has never been the most 'stylish' of actresses but she looks sooooooo much better when she appears at Indian functions in India, her attempts to do Oscar's glamour in a traditional gown are for me, a real disappointment.

Dress: Elizabeth Kennedy

Mindy Kaling, the other female South Asian icon at the Oscars looked remarkably better than Priyanka because although she wore a classic black dress, the detail of the blue  bow at the back is what gave it some personality and the overall look suited her. 

I'm not saying in anyway that because someone is Asian they should wear Asian clothes - but in Priyanka's case she has access to the best in Indian designers, so her choice was a wasted opportunity.

As for what I would wear to The Oscars, well I recently bought a red carpet dress (above) which has a gorgeous shimmer to it. It's the only long dress I own and I bought it in the January sales from Joy because it was reduced from £120 to £28 and fit me perfectly so I took it as a sign that I had to own it. It's what I would wear if I had to pick something from my current wardrobe right now.....but if I could get dressed by a designer, hands down it would be Manish Arora, Indian designer and fashion visionary. 

I can but only dream about wearing a creation of his One Day....

For this particular blog post I had to use images found online which aren't credited because there are so many versions of them - so thanks to whoever took them, I hope you can see this is a wee blog and I just needed them for illustrative purposes. Thanks.