Sunday, April 5, 2009

.easter nests.


I love Easter time!  Like I said in a previous entry, I was going to make various Easter type treats and dishes to inspire you in the kitchen this holiday.  We only have one week left!


Today, Paige and I made these sweet little chocolate rice krispy nests.  They were so much fun and if you've got kids in the house who like to get creative in the kitchen, you must make these with them.  Quick, easy, and super yummy.

In a pot, melt 1/4 cup butter over low heat.  Add 1 bag (10 oz) marshmallows and stir until they're all melted.  Make sure you or your child keeps stirring so the marshmallows don't burn in the pan.  Nobody likes a burnt rice krispy treat.  Ick.














When the marshmallows have melted, add 5 cups rice krispies.  Stir well to make sure everything's coated.
















Put 1 cup chocolate chips in a bowl.  Pop in the microwave for 1 minute and then stir to make sure they're all melted.
















Scoop the melted chocolate into the pan and stir.  This will give the nests a "dirty" look.  I suppose if you wanted to skip this step you could.. or you could even use cocoa krispies instead of regular.   I like it this way because it gives the krispy nest more firmness and isn't so wimpy and sticky.






Put cupcake liners in a muffin pan.

















Spoon a good amount of rice krispies into each muffin cup.  Use your fingers or some other kind of tool to dent in the center.  I had Paige use this Pampered Chef tool that I sprayed with Pam (so it wouldn't stick).














As you can see, we had to sneak a few bites which left us short 1 nest.  (oops) This recipe will make a full dozen though if you can exercise enough self control. 









Put 1/2 cup shredded coconut in a ziploc and put a small bit of green food coloring in.  If you use the Wilton gel type coloring, stick a toothpick into the color and then into the coconut.  That's all you'll need because we don't want glow in the dark green.  We just want to barely tint the coconut to make it look like light colored grass.





Put a little coconut grass in the middle where the indentation is.

















The final step is to put some M&Ms or those candy malted robin's eggs in the middle.  We used M&Ms with almonds that were the Easter pastel.  One green, pink, yellow, blue, and purple egg.  What a full nest for a little birdie!


4 comments:

Stephanie said...

Those are so cute! I forgot about those. We made them a few years ago. They even taste good which is a plus! If I had 2 hands to work with, and more time, I would have made them for the kids class. I hope I remember to do this next year!

Diana H said...

I think these are such a cute idea. Great treat and decorative too.

Regan said...

This was so timely! I got home last night to discover my daughter needed to bring a snack to first grade today. So we ran to the store, bought the ingredients, and made these! We used green icing instead of coconut, though, because I thought some kids would like it more and because it helped the eggs stay in better. They were a huge hit!

Agamemnonsmom said...

Thank you so much for posting this. My son and I made these today. They were perfect and didn't take much time at all.