Umami Deviled Eggs

My friends at Melissa's World Produce have wonderful blogger events througout the year, usually involving a cookbook demo and signing.  But their Christmas party is the event I look forward to each year, as the agenda is turned over to the bloggers themselves, with a dessert competition and an appetizer competition.  

This year, I was out of town for Thanksgiving with my family, then came home to begin a job that ended two days before Christmas.  I took a day off work to attend the Melissa's event - that's how important it is to me - but had little time for baking.  So I didn't get to enter the dessert competition, but I did manage to enter the appetizer competition with Umami Deviled Eggs.  

At Easter in my family, my uncle always brought the deviled egg plate.  And you never knew which one would contain an unseemly amount of some hot spice, meant to prank my dad or his brother.  Now that my uncle has passed, the task of making them has been handed slowly over to my mom, but I've never been invited to pitch in.  So I'd actually never made a deviled egg until the morning of the competition.  

One of my favorite vegetables is mushrooms.  While grocery shopping I came upon a product called Chaga Mushroom Powder.  I wasn't sure how I would use it, but I was intrigued, and I bought it.  Wanting to put a twist on the regular deviled egg for the competition, the mushroom powder came to mind.  Would it make a savory complement to a more common recipe?  I had to try it out.  They turned out wonderfully!  The color is dark due to the mushroom powder, but if you know what's in the dish, it's not off-putting.  

On the day of the competition, I couldn't find a cake decorating tip in my kitchen.  I drove to the location with the bag of filling separate from the eggs.  It's a good thing I did, because driving on LA freeways, I was forced to come to a sudden stop, and the plate of hard boiled eggs went flying in my car!  I lost half the servings I was planning to have for the competition, but this meant I had plenty of filling for the eggs that were left.  I made sure to demo the Chaga Mushroom Powder next to my dish so all the taste testers would know to expect a savory flavor profile and would understand the dark coloring.  If I were making this again for my own home holiday party, I might experiment with food coloring for the filling.

 

Umami Deviled Eggs

18 cooked hard boiled eggs, peeled

1/2 cup mayonnaise (I like Kraft Real Mayo)

2 Tbsp lemon juice

1 tsp Chaga Mushroom Powder

1/2 tsp Smoked Paprika

1/4 tsp dried mustard 

Halve the hard boiled eggs and empty the yolk into mixing bowl. Wash the eggs for presentation when filled.  Add all other ingredients to mixing bowl and combine.  Put a decorating tip onto a ziploc bag and fill the bag with the mixture.  Pipe the mixture into the eggs for an appealing look.  Garnish with parsley, paprika, or any other herb if desired.  

Do you serve deviled eggs at other occasions besides Easter?  What ingredients are in your favorite recipe?