I saw a photo online yesterday of deviled eggs that stood up, rather than laying flat and they were wrapped in ham, which looked divine – and since my daughter has decided she likes deviled eggs these days, I HAD to try it.

After boiling and peeling the eggs, I cut off the small pointy end, planning to scoop out the yolk and move forward with my devil-ing of the yolks – but this was not going to be as easy as I hoped.  The yolk was in most cases  further down and I couldn’t even see it when my egg was capped.  I started  trying to cut down to the yolk with a knife and then scooping out the yolk with a spoon, but this caused the egg white to rip and I was thinking “This is why they wrapped it in ham, to hold the *&&^%$ thing together!”

Eventually, I figured out a grapefruit spoon was the perfect solution.  I held the capped egg in one hand, surrounding it with my fingers.  With the grapefruit spoon, I cut around the egg about 1/4″ from the outer edge.  After I had gone all the way around, the egg white in the center would pop off like a cap, and I could find the yolk to scoop out, still with the grapefruit spoon.

I wrapped the egg whites with prosciutto (but you could use thin ham, bacon or any other very thinly sliced meat).  So these would stand up for filling, I put them in my mini-muffin pan.

For the stuffing, I made both a traditional deviled egg filling, using yolks, mayonnaise, Worchestershire sauce, red wine vinegar, salt and pepper, and oregano in the stuffing and sprinkled with paprika.

But I also wanted to try a greek version and made a tzaziki based filling as well.  I chopped about 1 c. finely diced cucumber, tossed that with sea salt and let that drain in a fine colander while I did all the other work.  In a bowl, I combined 2 T. Greek yogurt, 2 t. minced garlic, my egg yolks, red wine vinegar and about 1T. fresh chopped mint, adding the cucumber at the end.  After filling these eggs, I topped these with oregano.

Finely Chopped Cucumber
(about 1/4 inch dice)

My favorite greek yogurt.

Fresh Mint from the yard

I put the muffin pan with the devilled eggs into the oven pre-heated to 300° for 4 minutes.  This made the prosciutto a little drier and released the aroma of cooking bacon.  :p

Upright deviled eggs, with salad and grapes

The down side was because I had not prepared the boiled eggs in advance, dinner was ready quite late (8:30!).    We all agreed it was worth the wait, but we were starving, so they didn’t give me time to set up the lighting for a better picture of the final meal (and they had already eaten part of their dinner).

We let our eggs wobble like weebles, but I could have sliced a part off the bottom so they stood up straight if I was serving them in a more formal presentation.

The adults enjoyed the tzaziki deviled egg filling, the kids not so much.  That is why I made both versions.  I will definitely be fine tuning this recipe for the future.