Cascarones!

All year long i've been gathering egg shells in preparation for making Cascarones for Easter Sunday. Cascarones are a Mexican tradtion and much more fun than just searching for and then eating boiled eggs. To make Cascarones you use hollowed out egg shells, Easter egg decorations, confetti and tisue paper. This process can be as easy or as complicated as you would like to make it. Around this time you can also find some already made for purchase in some Mexican super markets or bazaars. But what is the fun in that? If you keep it simple it can be a great project to do with the kids. My family has some great memories of making as well as breaking these.

Some people hollow out their egg shells by poking holes on either end of the egg (such as with a straight pin) and then blowing through one end so the raw egg comes out on the other. I just carefully crack around one end to make just a big enough hole for the egg to come out, about a half inch or so, then thoroughly rinse the inside of the egg and let dry. I do this basically every time i'm cooking something that involves eggs which is why it takes me all year to gather. As you can imagine sometimes my egg doesn't crack like i want it to so i can't save it for this project. But i end up getting quite a good amount. I save them in empty egg shell cartons until time to do final preparations for Easter Sunday.

Today i pulled out my stash ( I had about 4 1/2 dz this year). After last Easter i went to all the sales and bought some egg dye. Since i have all nieces (i have 2 girls and 1 son - all over 18), i'm using the Disney Princess egg dye set today, following the directions on the package for dying regular boiled eggs. If you don't want the dye to get under your finger nails you may want to use dish gloves or other thin plastic glove to handle the dyeing process.

i dyed all my eggs and set them out to dry on newspaper. Depending on the time and how creative you want to get with your eggs, you can decorate any way you like. Some people really go all out and do beautiful designs with strips of colored tape (such as masking tape), etc. Have fun with it!

Once dry i filled about 3/4 full of confetti. Some people use flour or glitter but that just makes a huge mess in your hair and when you have girls it can be murder to get it out, confetti is hard enough.

Once all my eggs had the confetti i cut out small circles of tissue paper (any color will do) big enough to glue around the hole to keep my confetti in. Done!

My sisters and mom also do this so come Easter Sunday we have lots of eggs to hide and break on each others heads. Adults get in on the fun too. It's said that if someone breaks one on your head you will have good luck. Don't know about that but depending on who broke it on your head you may have a headache. We've taught the kids to gently break it on each other's heads and especially mommy's. The older kids can get carried away with it sometimes and we remind them to be gentle.
We break the cascarones outside of course and if you also hide boiled easter eggs you'll want to let everyonje know to check before cracking on someone's head if its a boiled egg or a true Cascarone. Otherwise - ewwww. Once the eggs are broken its all organic so no damage to the environment since its just egg shells and paper (again this is another reason i don't like to use flour or glitter for my 'fillings').