Panoramic Sugar Eggs for Easter (Video)

Make nostalgic panoramic sugar eggs for Easter with this tutorial! Sugar eggs last for years on display and are loaded with cuteness.

You might also like our peeps bunny sugar cookies, pop tart bunny house, or our bunny butt sugar cookies!

Watch our step by step video!

Make a darling nostalgic sugar egg to display in the spring. Sugar eggs have been around for decades and are a fun blast from the past. They aren’t hard to make and I’ll share tips for success!

Nostalgic Sugar Eggs

When I was little my grandma’s house was my favorite place to be. It was cozy and inviting and she was an absolute angel. She baked and sewed with us grandkids and made us all feel like her favorite. She had a china hutch in her living room with dishes, figurines, and gifts that she had received over the years. One year I noticed a beautiful egg on display. She said she had received it as a gift. It was made out of sugar and when you looked inside you could see all sorts of flowers and decorations made out of icing. The outside was decorated too. I knew it was a work of art, but silently wanted to eat it (as I’m sure most kids would).

That sugar egg stayed on display for over 15 years. I’m not sure what happened to the beautiful egg when she moved out of her home, but I decided this year that it was time to learn how to make them with my kids. Our vintage-inspired sugar eggs are WAY less intricate than hers was, but they were a lot of fun to make and easy to assemble.

Vertical Panoramic Sugar Eggs

Panoramic sugar eggs can be made vertically or horizontally. I prefer the look of vertical eggs so that is why my eggs are standing tall. You can make whatever you’d like, you’ll just need to adjust where the look-through hole is. If making a horizontal egg you’ll cut off the tip of each molded sugar egg to create a hole to peer through. With vertical eggs, you’ll create a hole with a cookie cutter on the front of the egg.

Many of the eggs that you see are made with 100% handmade icing flowers and intricate characters. We used pre-made icing decorations to make assembly easier and I love how they turned out. We even have a dinosaur version, which definitely sets that one apart.

Tips for Making Panoramic Sugar Eggs

I tried several different techniques for making the molded sugar eggs. My first attempt was from a tutorial that I found on Taste of Home. It required HOURS of drying time and my eggs immediately crumbled, probably because it was a rainy day and the eggs couldn’t dry all the way due to the humidity. Then I went over to YouTube and watched probably a dozen videos with varying techniques and measurements. The trick is baking the eggs in the oven for a few minutes instead of air drying. Once I did that it was smooth sailing.

The video that I found the most helpful was from YummyArts. She has a series of videos showing how to make the eggs, icing, and decorations.  I used her tutorial as a guide and changed up my baking times and temperature a bit. I’ve now made 6+  eggs using this technique with great success! I highly recommend watching the step-by-step video that I made (it plays under the first image in this post) as well as the first two videos from YummyArts which I’ll embed below.

 

Here are some things to keep in mind:

1. Different-sized molds require different amounts of sugar. My 5.5″ egg mold uses 3 cups of sugar and 2 tablespoons of water. If the mold that you use is bigger or smaller you’ll need to adjust.
2. The sugar can be reused! That’s right. If your egg crumbles, mash the sugar up and use it again. After you hollow out the eggs you can reuse the sugar that you removed to make more sugar eggs.
3. When you bake the egg, you are ONLY drying out the outside of the egg. DO NOT bake longer than my recommended time because you want the inside of the egg to still be slightly soft, making it easy to scoop the excess sugar out.
4. Use royal icing to assemble the egg. Do not use store-bought frosting in a tub (buttercream). Royal icing sets up like cement and can stand the test of time.
5. Humidity and climate can affect drying times for the molded sugar eggs. This is why I recommend baking the eggs instead of allowing them to air dry. It’s quicker and yields better results for me.

Panoramic Sugar Egg Supplies

Sugar Eggs

• egg mold: I found this egg mold on Amazon and it worked great. It comes with two cavities, but I found it easier to just fill one side of the mold at a time, transferring the egg half to a piece of cardboard and then making the other half of the egg.
• water: a small amount of water mixed with the sugar creates a sand-like texture for molding the eggs.
• food coloring: this is optional, but if you’d like a pretty pastel egg you’ll need about 6 drops of food coloring added to your water.
• sugar: white granulated sugar works great for sugar eggs. Some recipes call for caster sugar or pulsing the granulated sugar in a food processor. This isn’t necessary. Plain white sugar works great.
• cookie cutter: you’ll need some sort of cookie cutter to create the opening for the panoramic egg. I used a small oval (egg-shaped) cutter that I already had.
• cardboard: you’ll need a couple of pieces of cardboard that are slightly larger than your mold (just cut off the flaps from an Amazon box). You’ll place the molded eggs onto the cardboard to bake in the oven. Don’t worry, the oven temp is low and won’t burn the cardboard.

Royal Icing

• powdered sugar (confectioners’ sugar)
• meringue powder: when I make my pop tart houses I simply use powdered sugar and water to make my royal icing and it works great. For sugar eggs you want an extremely sturdy icing that you can pipe so I added meringue powder. You can also use a royal icing recipe that calls for egg whites.
• warm water: room temperature water or warm water works best when mixed with meringue powder.
• food coloring: we only colored the royal icing that we used for the grass, but you can divide the icing and make a variety of colors.

Decorations

• jelly beans: Mini jelly beans worked perfectly as Easter eggs and dinosaur eggs.
• icing decorations: you can find these on Amazon or at Target, Walmart, or Michaels. The dinosaur ones are from Walmart.
• icing tip for grass: you can use a star tip if you don’t have a grass tip to create a grassy patch of frosting.
• icing tip (Wilton #32 star): this tip is used for hiding the seam on the egg with icing.
• sprinkles: optional, but Easter sprinkles are fun to add. My kids added a few to the white shell border on the outside of their eggs.
• disposable icing bags: these disposable icing bags make cleanup a breeze. I recommend double bagging the royal icing.

How To Make Nostalgic Sugar Eggs

(If you have questions at any point make sure to watch my step-by-step video that plays under the first image in the post)

Step 1: Combine water and food coloring together in a small bowl. The color will fade when mixed with sugar so use a little more food coloring than you think you’ll need. Pour the colored water over 3 cups of white sugar in a mixing bowl. Mix with a whisk or wooden spoon until evenly distributed. The mixture should look and feel like wet sand.

Step 2: Pack the sugar into the egg mold. Fill all the way to the top, packing tight.

Step 3: Smooth the top of the mold with a spatula, scraping off excess sugar.

Step 4: Lay cardboard over the top of the mold, press down with one hand while holding the mold with the other, and flip. Gently remove mold. If the egg crumbles when you remove the mold, simply pack it again even tighter and try again.

Step 4: Gently press a small cookie cutter 1/8″ – 1/4″ into the top of one of the egg halves. Remove the cookie cutter. This will be where the window will be. Note: you are not cutting all the way through, just making an indentation that will fall out later.

Step 5: Carefully slice a small piece off of the bottom of each egg so that the egg has a flat place to stand once put together.

Step 6: Discard the excess sugar back into the bowl.

Step 7: You should now have two egg halves on pieces of cardboard. You can place them both onto a baking sheet or simply bake the cardboard directly on the oven rack (it will not burn). Bake the eggs at 200 degrees for 10 minutes. Cool for 10 minutes.

Step 8: Hollow out each egg half using a spoon, discarding excess sugar back into the bowl (you can reuse this to make more eggs by adding a little water to rehydrate it).

Step 9: Continue to carefully scoop until you have a shell with a 3/8″-1/2″ rim.

Step 10: When you get to the shell with the window, gently tap against it with your spoon and it should fall right out as you dig around it.

Step 11: Smooth out the opening with the spoon. Place the eggs back into the oven and bake for an additional 5 minutes. Let cool for 5 minutes.

Step 12: Beat meringue powder and warm water in a stand mixer until mixed. Add powdered sugar, and beat on low until it comes together. Increase speed to medium speed for 5-8 minutes. Note: According to YummyArts it should have stiff peaks and make a “flapping noise” as it hits the side of the bowl.

Step 13: Tint the royal icing, if desired, then transfer to disposable icing bags that have been fitted with icing tips.

Tip: if you notice that the icing tips are getting clogged from the royal icing (which dries out quickly), fill a cup of water 1/2″ with water and keep the frosting bags in the cup with the tips barely submerged. This will keep the icing soft and it won’t harden in the icing tips.

Step 14: Decorate your eggs from the back to the front, meaning: work on the back half of the egg first then work your way to the front half of the egg. Use the royal icing to adhere the decorations to the sugar eggs. Add jelly beans, etc. Let dry for 5-10 minutes.

Step 15: Pipe a line of icing around the rim of one of the eggs.

Step 16: Press the other egg half on top and hold it in place, smoothing the edges and making sure that the flat spots on the bottom of the egg halves line up.

Step 17: Cover the side seam with royal icing. I did a shell border, but you can do stars or any design you’d like.

Step 18: Cover the opening edge with royal icing as well.

Step 19: Add any finishing touches and let dry!

Panoramic Sugar Eggs Recipe and Tutorial

(printable version)

How long do sugar eggs last?

Once hardened they will last indefinitely. Avoid using items that will spoil and display on a shelf away from moisture.

Are panoramic sugar eggs edible?

Technically, yes. Everything I used is edible, but I can’t imagine eating straight granulated sugar or the stale icing decorations. However, if your child takes a lick or a bite they’ll be just fine.