20 April 2014

Easter nostalgia

I seem to have more memories of childhood Easters than I do of Christmases, for some reason. Like the time I left an Easter egg on the living room windowsill and it melted into a puddle. Mum put it in the freezer and I remember sitting in the garden the next morning, nibbling on frozen chocolate, thinking it was much nicer than the egg would have been.

Apart from hot cross buns on Good Friday, I don't think we had any particular food every Easter. Except various forms of chocolate, of course - the children at school would brag about how many eggs they'd received. Easter eggs don't seem to be as much of a thing over here, although chocolate certainly is.

My aunt sent us an Easter parcel with some Cadbury's mini eggs in it and they brought back a vivid memory of a cake my mother made one Easter. It had a bird's nest on top, made out of Shredded Wheat coated with chocolate, and a clutch of mini eggs in the middle.

I don't have any Shredded Wheat, but I did have some chow mein noodles which I thought might work just as well. I melted a bar of 85% chocolate with about 50g of butter and a tablespoon or two of honey, then stirred in the noodles, breaking them up a bit. I used my crumpet/egg rings as moulds for the nests (on a baking sheet covered with parchment paper) and piled the chocolate-covered noodles into them. 


I used the handle of a wooden spoon to make a bit of an indentation in the centre of each nest, then refrigerated them for a couple of hours until the chocolate had hardened, Then I removed the rings and put the mini eggs in the centre.


A perfect Easter dessert!

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