Deviled eggs

As my sister recently observed, from an early age Dutch children are trained in raising money for charity and other kinds of projects. The school needs a new playground? The kids get family and friends to sponsor them for running rounds. They sell lottery tickets in support of the tennis club and tulip bulbs for the boy scouts.
In December, my daughter’s school did a big fundraiser in support of Serious Request. The idea was: divide all second year students into 35 groups, give each group an apple, send them to town where they will trade the apple for another item, then trade that item for something else and so on, until they end up with something awesome that can be auctioned for a lot of money in the evening.
But somewhere it went wrong (or very right – depending on your point of view) and instead of 35 items, the kids brought back about 350 items, including, surprisingly, about ten bottles of wine and some liquor, too. In order to speed up the auction, the teacher in charge had to combine several items and sell them as a package, some of them pretty interesting. A set of hairrollers, a bottle of wine and a teddy bear – surely sounds like a recipe for a wild night.
My husband set his mind on a bottle of Champagne, which he got all right, along with an assortment of Christmas ornaments, 10 shoehorns, a bracelet, a pink purse and a very ugly lamp.
But that was not the end of it: the kids were also sponsored for fasting for 24 hours. They slept at school and ended the fast with a potluck breakfast. My daughter wanted to bring deviled eggs and since my mother makes very good deviled eggs, she assumed I did, too. I have never actually made them, only helped with filling and it’s not a hereditary skill. So, after some emailing back and forth, she brought 2 classmates, we fiddled a little and here they are. As good as grandma’s.
Next time I’ll experiment with adding different flavors, but for now I’m happy to have a good basic recipe.

One year ago: Purple potato salad

Deviled eggs grandma’s way
10 eggs
60 g soft butter
1 1/2 tbsp Dijon mustard
1/2 tsp smoked paprika, plus more for garnish
1tsp lemon juice

Boil the eggs in simmering water for 10 minutes. Drain them and cover with cold water. If you boil them in advance (say the evening before), they’re probably easier to peel – though there are many theories on how to succeed in peeling them neatly.
Cut the eggs in half horizontally and pop out the yolks. In a medium bowl, mash the yolks with a fork. Add the rest of the ingredients and mix thoroughly. I used a hand held mixer to make it really smooth. Put the filling in a pastry bag, pipe the filling into the halves and sprinkle a little paprika on top.

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