Egg Mold Egg-stravanganza! Featuring new CuteZcute Animal Palz!

Preschooler Birdie is loving hard-cooked eggs lately, and since she's pretty anti - meat these days, I've been making sure to include a protein-rich "eggie" in every lunch, & keep some ready-made to offer as quick healthy snacks. I use egg molds to make them fun shapes!

Egg molds are pretty easy to use: 

1. Hard-cook your eggs. I bring mine to a boil in salted water, then turn off the burner, put the lid on the pot, and let sit for 15 minutes.
2.  Peel while still warm. I peel mine under running water, I find it helps the the shell come off more easily.
3. Pop the warm egg into a mold. Sometimes you may need to do a little squishing, sometimes it may close easily - it's trial & error :)
4. Chill in the fridge, in the molds. I put mine in a bowl of ice water as soon as they're in the mold, to completely stop the cooking process so the yolks don't get a grayish ring, and speed up the cooling, in case I want to make more than one of the same shape. 
5. Once cooled, pop them out of the mold! Easy-peasy. Well, okay, they don't always come out perfect; I've made plenty of messy ones. Birdie doesn't care, and if it's really bad, egg salad is good too :)

I've learned that larger eggs work best, but since they vary in size, so do my results :) If the egg is too big for the mold, I'll trim a bit off the pointier end, or if it's on the small side, add a bit of paper towel underneath it to fill the gap. Or I don't worry about it - the sproutlets aren't harsh critics, and sometimes the results can be fun anyways!  I discovered by trial & error that a smaller egg in the star mold makes a blossom shape!

I hard-cook 4-6 eggs at a time and immediately mold them so I have a bunch in the fridge to choose from when I pack lunch in the morning, or for her to choose a snack after preschool.  Birdie can't read the words imprinted on the cubed eggs but she likes the square shape, and they are handy for when a monkey or a car won't fit my theme ;)

Sometimes I mangle the eggs while peeling them. If they are too messed up, they become a snack for me, or egg salad for the hubby. But if they're just gouged a bit, I pop them in a mold anyways, see what happens - they often come out cute anyhow. Like the lamb in the yellow cup below. That egg was a mess. But it came out of the mold looking all right!

As you can see, I've got a lot of different egg molds to choose from:

• Star & Heart
• Rabbit & Bear
• Fish & Car
• Egg & Bon Appetit Squares
• Hello Kitty
• Panda, Monkey, Lamb, & Bat

My newest egg mold, & my new favourite bento tool, is the CuteZcute Animal Palz that I used to make the panda, monkey, & lamb. It also makes an adorable bat! It's not only an egg mold, it's also a pocket sandwich press! So versatile, & simple to use, I love it. See how cute:

 

And the bat! Eek! I love the bat ♥ 

The CuteZcute Animal Palz set comes with all the pieces shown below. You can flip the base piece over if you don't want the CuteZcute name imprinted on your egg, then you have a flat surface on which you could even use food markers to draw your own creature or character!

 

Egg molds are not limited to eggs, either. Most of the egg molds shown can also be used to mold cute sandwich balls or rice balls (onigiri). And the monbento square molds double as treat boxes :)

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More egg molds added to my collection!

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The giveaway has ended.

I'm so excited about this new CuteZcute Animal Palz set that I want to share it with everyone! And BentoUSA has generously offered to help me out by allowing me to give away a set to one lucky reader ♥ 

And, 3 more lucky second chance winners will each get a set of either the heart & star, bear & rabbit, or fish & car egg molds!  It's an egg mold giveaway egg-stravaganza!

Thank you BentoUSA for sponsoring this giveaway & CuteZcute for an awesome product!