As my deviled egg experimentation continues, I decided to try a souped-up and much changed version of a recipe for pesto deviled eggs I found in a cookbook. The recipe I found was not agreeable in a number of ways. First of all, it called for a sizable dose of sun-dried tomatoes. Now, I love sun-dried tomatoes, but with a tablespoon and a half, that makes it Sun-dried Tomato Eggs, not Pesto Eggs. Now, sun-dried tomato eggs sounds like a very good idea, one that I will most certainly try making one day, but if I’m going to make pesto eggs, I’m going to let the pesto be the main attraction.

The other thing I didn’t like about the recipe I had on hand is that it was too simple. Not enough ingredients. Clearly this recipe was much too reliant on the sun-dried tomatoes, so I would have to make some major additions and substitutions. The result was as follows:

SARAH’S PESTO PARMESAN EGGS

Cut eggs in half length-wise and scoop out the yolks. In a small bowl or container, combine yolks, sour cream, cheese, pesto, garlic, bacon bits, nuts, basil, wine and pepper with electric beaters. Once the yolk mixture is combined, spoon the mixture into the yolk halves and chill for at least two hours before serving.

I was actually quite pleasantly surprised with how these eggs turned out. Usually I give a recipe a couple tries before I’m happy enough with it to post online, but these came out swimmingly the first time. Next time I make them I’ll try doing just a couple things differently. First, I didn’t chop the fresh basil before I added it. I was feeling lazy and decided just to pick some from my window plant, wash it and toss it in. Some of it got torn up in the beaters, but a lot of the leaves were left whole. Next time I’ll chop the basil a bit before I toss it in. Next, I want to try using lemon juice instead of wine. This recipe has a distinct lack of acidic ingredients, which help keep the eggs looking and tasting fresh. Most deviled egg recipes include mayo and/or prepared mustard, both of which have vinegar already in them. The original recipe didn’t even have the white wine; I added that because I thought it could use some form of acidic preservative and I was afraid the lemon juice might clash with the dairy elements. The eggs still tasted fine a day later, but they started to get a little discolored around the edges. Next time I’ll try lemon juice to see if it will keep them fresher looking longer. White wine vinegar might be feasible as well, but I didn’t have any on hand. The bacon could, of course, be omitted for vegetarians.