Panoramic Sugar Eggs for Easter

Sugar Eggs for Easter are Awesome!

Growing up, panoramic sugar eggs were an Easter tradition! And now I want to share how to make them with you. They aren’t the easiest things to make but they are super awesome. It’s one of those nostalgic activities that make you smile. These sugar eggs have a cute miniature scene inside. Your kids will want to eat these but that would be gross because your hands will be ALL over them. But they do make an adorable Easter decoration. I only share things I love and think you’ll like too. This post contains affiliate links, which means if you purchase through one of these links, I am compensated.

What are Panoramic Sugar Eggs?

Panoramic sugar eggs are super cool and nostalgic. They are hollow eggs made of sugar that have a diorama-like scene inside. You pack moistened sugar into a mold to create a hard shell that can be decorated and used as an Easter decoration. These are not meant to be eaten, instead, they are meant to gaze upon while wishing you could eat them.

My mom and I had so much fun posting about the candy bar trains we used to make at Christmas that we thought we would share these super fun sugar eggs too. They are a bit time-consuming, and pretty fragile, but the end result is so sweet, it makes the work worth it. Thank goodness we only make these every few years…

Make sure you read through the directions before you decide to make them. You really need to make them a day or two ahead of time to make sure they set up and harden as much as possible. Or you can pull a Sharon and read through the steps halfway and then try to make them and not give yourself enough time…

Long story short, you make the sugar eggs for Easter ahead of time and then decorate them later.

Watch A Sugar Panoramic Eggs Video

It might be helpful to watch a quick video to see how the whole process looks. This recipe uses meringue powder which probably helps make the sugar harden better. They also made theirs standing up which allows for more room for a scene. I also think it makes them more susceptible to kids knocking them over. From a girl who wouldn’t use a stemmed wine glass until her youngest turned 8, I prefer to make them on their side. :)

How to Make Sugar Eggs for Easter

You need a few special items to make these so you will want to make sure you plan ahead. You need the sugar egg mold like this one here. I bought mine on Amazon and since I have prime it showed up really quickly. My mom picked some larger ones up from the local cake supply store. Amazon does have some larger ones that you need to buy the two parts for but isn’t Prime and ends up costing about $20.

You will also need some dollhouse miniatures to create your little scene with inside the egg. I am super lucky that I have my mom’s vintage miniatures to use. I’ve looked at my local craft stores and also online and they are really hard to come by. I pick them up whenever I see any that might work for the candy bar trains or these sugar eggs.

And yes, some people make these panoramic eggs standing up and cutting out the center. That seems crazy hard and we didn’t want to attempt that.

My mom did not keep her sugar egg instructions so she searched around online to refresh her memory of how to make the sugar. She used this post as a guide.

We made the pink eggs to show the first steps. The white finished eggs were made a few days ahead of time (by my mom – because she knows how to properly plan ahead) so they would be dried out and hard enough to work with.

Ingredients:

6 cups sugar
3 TBSP water
Food coloring (optional)

Steps:

Make the sugar mixture by mixing 6 cups super fine sugar (or put regular sugar in a food processor for a minute), 3 tablespoons of water and we used a touch of food coloring because I thought it would make things easier to see in photos. But I prefer white panoramic eggs.
Once the sugar mixture is ready, press it in to your egg mold. Really press it making sure it is packed tight.
After you’re done compacting the sugar, use a butter knife to level the egg. It is best to do one half of the egg at a time because they are really fragile at this point and if you flop the other side out and don’t catch it correctly it will crumble.

While it is still soft, you want to cut the flat edge off that will be the front window to the panoramic Easter egg. As you can tell, this is the smaller mode and the window is pretty small. The real magic happens on the inside.
Dig out a little section, which will help you get started scooping out the middle, later.
Then wait. For about 2 hours.

After two hours, the center will still be a bit soft but the outer shell will be harder.
Using a spoon, scoop out the middle, leaving enough around the outside so that it doesn’t collapse.
Do small sections at a time being extra careful near the front section, which you previously cut flat.
It will be harder than the center and you may need to use a little pick or tooth pick to help get through it. (A spoon might be a little too much force.)

The egg on the right is scooped out and the other side is not. If you wait too long, you won’t be able to scoop it out and then you will have a solid sugar egg which I think would still look pretty cool, especially if you didn’t cut off the flat edge on the front. Once it is all scooped out, let the eggs sit to harden for a day or more.

Once the sugar eggs are hard, you can start getting really creative with them. You will need miniatures, royal icing in various colors and bright candies to decorate with. These chocolate covered sunflower seeds are super cute and look like little Easter eggs!

My mom used to do a lot of cake decorating so she has a ton of decorative icing tips that I get to use for these fun food crafts. Here we made grass using green royal icing. The royal icing works as the glue to hold in the scene inside the eggs.

If I was doing this myself, since I have no baking or decorating skills, I would color some coconut and use it for grass instead.

Once your scene is complete, you can then start to put your eggs together and decorate the outside.

Oh hey there drunk bunny. I found this miniature wine bottle and glasses at the craft store and knew I had to pick it up. I think it worked out pretty perfectly with this little guy. Nothing says Jesus is risen like a bunny drinking wine.

Next use royal icing to “glue” the two halves together.

Try to match it up as close as possible. Don’t worry if it doesn’t match exactly.

You can use a nail file to file down the sugar and make the edges match up a little better. Just be careful! It’s fragile!

And then the fun begins of decorating the outside. I don’t have any experience with cake decorating so I got really sweaty when my mom suggested that I do this part. Just practice a few times on a paper towel first and get the technique down. This little flower was super simple with the flower tip. The icing hides the seem in the sugar and makes it look cuter.

How to Pipe a Flower

And then you finish decorating however you would like to. I piped icing all around the front and then added some pizzaz to the top in the way of sugar candies.

When my kids got home from school and saw these they totally freaked out. Well, they immediately asked if they could eat them and then they told me how cool they thought these were.

This project is not quite as kid friendly as the candy bar trains were but I can certainly see older kids wanting to help with these. And making funny little scenes to go inside.