Easy 10-Minute Chocolate Birds Nest Cookies

04/06/20

(Updated 04/14/22)

These fun and festive no-bake birds nest cookies can be adapted to use whatever chocolate, nuts, seeds, or cereal you have on hand. They’re cute, crunchy, and come together incredibly quickly! A yummy Easter dessert idea.

Chocolate easter nest topped with easter eggs.

These easy birds nest cookies are the cutest – and surely easiest – sweet treat to make when Easter’s around the corner. Best yet, it’s a speedy recipe that takes less than 15 minutes to make!

They’re incredibly versatile, happily using up whatever crunchy nuts, crisp cereals, or squidgy dried fruit are accumulating in the pantry. Because of this, each mouthful offers up texture galore – yum.

Easy and delicious dessert recipes like this can be a fun way to help wee ones build confidence in the kitchen. They’ll have oodles of fun adding ingredients to a bowl, giving it a mix, and pressing little chocolate bird eggs into the middle of each nest.

Ingredients Needed

  • Chocolate. Use your pick of dark, milk or white. If vegan or dairy free, check your chocolate doesn’t contain any milk products – dark chocolate typically won’t at a high enough percentage.
  • Nuts, cereals, dried fruit or seeds. Opt for whatever needs to be used up in the pantry or buy a mix you like the sound of. A ratio of 250g chocolate to 3 cups total mix-in’s work well. Dark chocolate can be bitter, which is where sweet mix in’s like dried fruit help balance. As milk and white chocolate is sweeter, nuts and seeds work well.
  • Mini chocolate eggs. Pastel-coloured eggs are lovely for a colour pop, but brown chocolate eggs work well too.

There are so many variations to try! Have a play and see what you like. Thread-like ingredients – like slivered almonds, long stranded coconut and chow mein noodles – can give it a real birds nest vibe🐦.

Kitchen Tips

Making chocolate birds nests is incredibly easy, but a few tips certainly help your kitchen flow:

  • Chop, dice or slice larger ingredients (like apricots or dates). Otherwise smaller ingredients, like seeds or coconut, can be left as is.
  • Melt chocolate baine-maire which means in a heat-proof bowl over a small stove pot of barely simmering water – it’s a bit easier to control the temperature and prevent burning. You can use the microwave too, but as there’s a lot of chocolate make sure to keep a close eye on it – microwave in bursts and stir regularly.
  • Use muffin cups for easy portioning and clean up. I do regular-sized cups, but you could do mini-bites and dot in a single egg.

Serving Suggestions

These chocolate easter nests are ideal to make and enjoy when it’s Easter, but they’re not seasonally exclusive. They’d be great on the table at a kiddies birthday party or even as an after school snack. The only issue you’ll find will be finding easter eggs to dot in!

They will start to soften at room temperature so remove from the fridge when you’re just about to eat them.

Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoy these yummy Easter-inspired treats. Looking for another kid-friendly recipe? Try this eggy-toast for breakfast🍞.

Easy 10-Minute Chocolate Birds Nest Cookies

Prep Time: 10 minutes
Serving Size: 12
Rating:

Ingredients:  

  • 250g chocolate (milk, dark or white)
  • 3 cups mix-in ingredients (nuts, dried fruit, cereal or seeds)
  • 36 mini chocolate easter eggs

Method:

  • Line a muffin tin with 12 muffin cases.
  • Melt chocolate bain marie style. Start by breaking the chocolate into small pieces and then place it into a heatproof bowl. Sit over a small stove-pot of barely simmering water (a bain marie) and allow the chocolate to melt, stirring occasionally. The bowl and water in the stovetop shouldn’t touch – but the heat that comes up will melt the chocolate! Once melted, turn off heat.
  • Chop any ingredients into smaller pieces if needed (e.g. dice apricots, chop cashews or almonds into thirds). Add to the chocolate.
  • Mix using a spatula toss together until evenly coated.
  • Spoon and divide mixture into muffin cases. Press in a few mini easter eggs to the middle of each.
  • Place the fridge or freezer to harden.
  • Remove or keep in muffin cases to serve.

Notes:

Storage instructions In the fridge. If out for long at room temperature they may soften.
Dairy-free? Most high percentage dark chocolates will be free of milk solids. Check ingredients list to confirm. 
Gluten-free? Use gluten-free cereal. 
Not Easter time? No problem. Make all year around, sans mini chocolate eggs.
Using dark chocolate?High percentage dark chocolates can taste a little bitter to some. To break through the bitterness, a little bit of dried fruit is great included in the mix.

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If you enjoyed this dish, please consider giving it a star rating when you post a comment. Star ratings help others discover my recipes online (and your reviews make my day! 🙂 ). Happy cooking and baking. Danijela x

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