Easter Nest – With Mini Eggs

I often watch videos from Sorted Food, which is a group of guys having far more fun that should be legal, whilst cooking.  One of their latest videos was for an Edible Nest, that looked so easy and would be a lovely presentation piece on a table.  So I decided I would make one too.  If you click on the link in the previous sentence you can see how they did it.  My version is pretty much the same, but I didn’t employ a tractor, or even venture outdoors, for mine.

Quite simply it has chocolate, pretzels, shredded wheat and some seeds, nuts and berries, in whatever combination you might wish.   Mixed together and formed into a nest shape it is then chilled to firm up and mini eggs are placed in the middle.

Really, nothing could be simpler, so why not give it a try.

The guys at Sorted Food used just dark chocolate whereas I decided that a mixture of milk and dark would suit my purpose better.

Ingredients:

• 200g milk chocolate
• 100g dark chocolate
• 8 shredded wheat, weight is about 180g
• 100g salted pretzels
• 200g seeds, nuts, berries(I used sunfllower seeds, pine nuts and goji berries)
• Mini eggs(I used a packet of white chocolate eggs, some shiny coloured eggs and some matt shelled eggs).

Method:

1. Melt the two chocolates in a bain marie(double boiler), or in the microwave(be careful to watch it to ensure no burning).
2. Split the shredded wheat in half along their length and break into shreds as long as you can.
3. Crumble the pretzels into pieces.
4. Add the pretzels, shredded wheat and most of the nuts, seeds and berries into large bowl and mix together.
5. Pour the melted chocolate over the top and mix to combine everything.  There will be some parts that wont be fully coated in chocolate.  That is fine, it makes the nest more realistic.
6. On a silicone mat, or some greased foil, use about 70% of the mixture to form a large, flat, base for the nest.
7. Use the remaining mixture in a ring on top of the base, leaving the hole in the middle, for the eggs.
8. Sprinkle the remaining seeds, nuts and berries over the top, pressing down slightly to make contact with wet chocolate.
9. Place the nest in the fridge for at least an hour to chill and firm up.
10. Remove from the fridge and fill the nest with mini eggs.