This week, with the Easter holidays well underway and Easter itself only around the corner, Roy decided it was time to make something appropriate for the holiday. He was going through his old cookbooks when he came across a fun little idea which promised to make beautiful Easter biscuits. Even better, the recipe was really easy. After checking whether the ingredients were all still available, and finding substitutes for those which weren't, he had a go at making the biscuits and was really impressed by how they turned out. So this week Roy Creates Easter Chicken and Egg Nest Biscuits.
You Will Need:
- Shredded wheat or digestive biscuits. Any large, plain, round biscuit will do.
- Dark or milk chocolate, whichever you prefer. Roy likes dark personally, but either will work just fine.
- Chocolate licorice bullets. If you don't like these you could dye some coconut green and make grass instead.
- Store bought white ready to roll icing
- Yellow food colouring
- Silver cachous
- Orange jellybeans or jelly babies. You could use any other other colour you liked though.
- Hundreds and thousands
Note: You can easily adapt this recipe to make it nut, gluten or egg free and still get great results.
Method:
- The first step is to make your decorations. Start by making three little Easter eggs. To do this, take small lumps of icing and roll them into three balls. Then, use your fingers to roll the ends into an egg shape. Pour some hundreds and thousands into a bowl and roll your eggs around in them to coat. Then, set the eggs aside to 'dry'
- Next, you will need to make a little chicken. Take a lump of icing and work some yellow food colouring into it. Use a skewer to drop the colour onto the icing and then knead the colour in until you have an even, light yellow icing.
- Now, break the yellow icing into three sections, big, medium and small. Roll the big and medium sections into balls and sit the medium one on top of the big one, as Roy has done above. Now, flatten the third, small section and roll it out between a piece of clingwrap. Use a 1 inch cutter (or cut around a cork) to cut a small circle from the icing. Use the ends of a fork to lightly indent the edges of the circle and then use a small, sharp knife to cut it into quarters. Lightly stick two of the quarters onto the big ball of icing as wings.
- Cut a little triangle of orange jelly sweet as a beak and press it lightly into the the chickens head and then press two silver cachews into the birds head as eyes.
- Put your chicken aside to dry.
- Put some of the chocolate into a bowl and melt it, then spread a thick layer onto the biscuit.
- Attach bullets to the edge of the biscuit, in a 'nest' shape and use extra melted chocolate to build the nest up.
- Use a little melted chocolate to stick the eggs and chicken into the nest and let the biscuit set.
- Now, enjoy your little Easter treat! You can make as many as you like for Easter gifts or to decorate an Easter table.