Mini chocolate bird’s nests

My observations about young children:

1. They like chocolate.
2. They like anything miniature (probably due to their own half pint size.)
3. They like anything that pretends to be something else.

I’m talking about Matey bubble bath that looks like a sailor, rucksacks that look like dead cows slung across their backs, beds that double up as trains and chocolate mice. I have to say I’m with them on this particular like.

So here’s a recipe remembered from my childhood, except I’ve made it even more mini than it was in the 80s. I hope you like it. Charlie and his little friend only got a couple each as I snaffled the rest. They are kind of canapé size after all…

Ingredients (to make 12):

• 30g butter (I used that light butter spread but only ’cause damned Tesco substituted 5 tubs of this for the 5 blocks of butter I ordered… who on earth did my shopping? Anyway, I now need to use it.)
• 10g golden syrup – this is about a heaped teaspoon.
• 100g milk chocolate broken into squares
• 40g mini shredded wheat cereal crumbled up between your fingers
• half a bag of mini mini eggs, I used these from Asda but I have to say I used them for their look and not their very sugary, tooth enamel damaging taste
• 12 of those little tiny petit four cases

So quick and easy it’s tempting to eat the lot before it gets to the cases and make another batch. Obviously I didn’t do that though. That would be akin to eating spaghetti hoops from the saucepan.

Melt the butter, golden syrup and chocolate in a saucepan over a low heat until the lot has dissolved into a chocolatey shiny mess. Then add the shredded wheat and stir with a metal spoon until all the strands of ‘nest’ are covered. Using a teaspoon fill the petit four cases with the nest material, making a small dip in the middle of each nest for 3 little eggs to be pushed into. Leave to cool and in the unlikely event that these last beyond about an hour, store in a tin and not in the fridge. They go soggy in the fridge you see.

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