Mmm, that sounds yummy...I love Brussel Sprouts! And with Bacon and Shallots, that sounds like heaven!
Here is another fun little Easter Treat I make that children especially love. When my daughters were really little they often helped by hand selecting all the small egg shaped candies and dropping them in the nests. It was one of their first cooking jobs at about 2 or 3 years old and they had great fun! (Beware at this age they eat a good portion of the candies before they ever make it to the nests!)
Birds Nests
1 package Chocolate chips, melted
1 package coconut (For those who dont like coconut you can use a package of the hard Chinese noodles, they just make a little bigger nests, one year we used rice krispies and they were good too, but the nests didn’t have little twigs sticking out like the ones made with the coconut or the noodles!)
Hummingbird eggs or other small jelly bean like candies
Fold coconut into melted chocolate chips a little at a time until all coconut is fully coated with chocolate. Drop spoonfuls of the mixture on to a wax paper or parchment lined cookie sheet in rounds. Use the end of a wooden spoon to make a small indentation in the middle to make it look like a nest. Fill the nest with hummingbird eggs or other small jellybean candies.
Refrigerate until these harden and then they can be pulled off of the waxed or parchment paper.
Note: I make a similar treat at Christmas and make them in the shape of a wreath, and decorate with cinnamon candies and pieces of wintergreen leaf shaped gum drop candies. It is a fun recipe to be creative with.
I have also decorated cupcakes for Easter with a marshmallow bunny face. To make the face I cut one marshmallow in half so you have two rounds. One round becomes the face that you can decorate using candies, piped icing, or even the food markers.
The other piece you snip partway down the middle and bend the two open ends out to form the general shape of the ears. I dip the cut side of the marshmallow in pink sprinkles (they stick better to this side) and then flatten it and shape it a little with my hands so a white edge forms around the outside of the sprinkled pink section.
I then place the ears on top of my cupcakes, and then the face, slightly overlaping the ears, so it looks just like a little bunny face looking up at you.
I couldn’t find a picture of these on line and I don’t have a picture on this computer of the ones we made, but they are adorable.
The food markers are great for little children to use to draw the bunny faces on the marshmallows. Betty Crocker and Wilton both make them and usually can be found at cake decorating shops and sometimes in the bakery section of your regular grocery store.