I’ve now written several articles about all the fun things you can do during the Easter season. We’ve looked at loads of crafts that are really fun get stuck in to, but now we’ll have a final look at something you can have fun with, this time in the Kitchen. Easter nests are a pretty and tasty treat to make this time of year, and perfectly resemble both Easter and Spring, since the nest represents bringing new life and the eggs are, as discussed in previous articles, a traditional symbol of Easter. Easter nests are also cheap and very efficient to make, so if you’ve got a lot of people coming to visit over the Easter period, then this is an easy way to treat each one.
When it comes to making the nests, you’ll need just a few ingredients. To make 12 nests, you’ll need:
200g of chocolate
Roughly 200g of shredded wheat
2 packets of mini-eggs
Some cake-cases to set your nests in
To make more or less nests, just double or halve all of the ingredients in the recipe. You will need the same number of cake-cases as the number of nests you want to make.
To begin, take your shredded wheat in a bowl, and crush it all up with your hands. This may take quite a while, dependant on how much shredded wheat you are using and how fine you want your pieces of shredded wheat to be. If you are happy with larger clumps then this stage can be quite quick, but in general, the smaller and finer your individual pieces of shredded wheat are, the more impressive, and more nest-like your final product will look. To speed up this process, you may be able to use a food-processor or if you’re making a large batch and so are using the whole bag’s worth of shredded wheat in your recipe, then you might consider keeping it in the bag and just bashing this with a rolling pin, since in this method, the shredded wheat can’t move and so is much more easy to smash apart.
Now break all of your chocolate into separate pieces in a microwaveable bowl or jug (not the same bowl as your shredded wheat) and microwave this on a medium setting for a couple of minutes. Now take it out and stir it. If there are still solid pieces of chocolate in the mixture, replace it in the microwave for another few minutes. Once done, it should all be melted to a liquid. It can now be combined with the shredded wheat, so pour it in, and then mix the chocolate with the shredded wheat particles, until every piece is covered. Because of the chocolate, your mixture should now stick together quite well. If it appears to liquid-y, then add some more shredded wheat, and if not all of the shredded wheat is covered, add some more chocolate, but otherwise it should be fine.
Now scoop the mixture into the cake cases, not filling them too high, since your result should look like little nests, quite wide and flat, as opposed to tall. Once you have filled all of your cases, you can add three little eggs to each one. You should have enough eggs to do this, but if you run out, then the nests will not look bad with just two eggs in, so even out the number a little.
Now leave your nests in the fridge to set for several hours. When you take them out again, they should be hard and stable, so that you can remove them from the cake cases without damaging them. By removing them, they look less cake-like and much more like real little nests. For further inspiration, you could also make nests out of little chocolate cakes or out of meringue!
Image from: http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-gYdwlcY2biQ/T3xDU4ZvVfI/AAAAAAAAAcc/FeV52_oji0E/s1600/IMG_1833.JPG
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