I have emerged from the black hole of pre-exam misery, and come bearing delicious and adorable treats for Easter. My friend Pamela was drooling over some chocolate chip cookie dough bites she saw online, so I promised her we would make them together after our exam. In order to make an excuse to post the same recipe again, I’ve adapted them for springtime and tucked them into chocolate haystacks shaped as nests! You gotta love this time of year when all the candy is shaped as eggs — forcing candy-makers to increase their filling to coating ratio. These chocolate chip cookie dough eggs are no exception and the extra filling is much appreciated!
These adorable bites are eggless chocolate chip cookie dough shaped into eggs (eggless eggs, hilarious right?), dipped in pastel candy melts and sprinkled with disco dust. It would also be really cute if you wanted to decorate the eggs with royal icing or edible pens, a great project for kids! But we’re a bunch of girls in our 20s, so we went for the bling. The nests are made from chow mein noodles, melted chocolate and butterscotch chips, and a heap of peanut butter. I formed the nests by pressing the chow mein mixture into greased muffin tins — quite a messy task but I think they came out really cute! Granted the eggs are a little big for their nests, but I just like to think they’re extra cozy.
Thanks to my friends Pamela and Colleen for their help making these (and taste testing them!) — there’s a lot of steps involved in making these cuties, so I really appreciated their extra hands! But don’t be intimidated by the recipe below, get some friends or family together in the kitchen and have a blast like we did :)
Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Eggs with Chocolate PB Nests
For the cookie dough:
Recipe adapted from Love and Olive Oil
1-1/4 cups all purpose flour
1/2 tsp salt
1/8 tsp baking soda
1/2 cup butter, at room temperature
1/4 cup+ 2 tbsp granulated sugar
1/4 cup+ 2 tbsp brown sugar, packed
1/2 tsp vanilla
2-1/2 tbsp milk
1/2 cup mini semi-sweet chocolate chips
Pastel candy melts
For the chocolate PB nests:
Recipe adapted from The Curvy Carrot
6 oz semi-sweet chocolate chips
6 oz butterscotch chips
1 cup creamy peanut butter
6 oz chow mein noodles
– Start by making the cookie dough: beat together the butter and sugars in the bowl of an electric mixer until light and fluffy, about 2-3 minutes. Add milk and vanilla.
– Sift together flour, baking soda, and salt together in a large bowl, then add to the butter slowly with mixer on low until just incorporated.
– Stir in the chocolate chips by hand with a spatula. Form dough into a ball, cover with plastic wrap, and chill in the fridge while you make the nests (30 minutes – 1 hour).
– For the nests, generally grease 12 muffin tins.
– In a large microwave-safe bowl, melt the chocolate and butterscotch chips in 30 seconds intervals, stirring in between intervals.
– Once melted, stir in the peanut butter until smooth.
– Carefully add the chow mein noodles, using a large rubber spatula to help avoid breaking the noodles.
– Using a large spoon or your fingers (I went with the latter) press some of the mixture into each of the muffin tins, making sure to create a well in the middle for the eggs to sit in.
– Chill nests in the fridge for at least an hour.
– Once the dough has been chilled, form small eggs from the dough and place onto a wax-paper lined cookie sheet. After you form all of the eggs, return them to the fridge for another 30 minutes.
– After the eggs are chilled, melt your candy melts in deep bowls and dip your eggs. I like to only take about 5 of them out of the fridge at a time so they don’t become soft at room temperature. For the dipping technique, I like to use a spoon to dunk the eggs, and then take the spoon out, tap it on the edge of the bowl to remove the excess, and then lay the egg back onto a wax paper-lined cookie sheet. I’ll then take a toothpick to run along the bottom of the egg to make it as clean-cut looking as possible.
Recipe yields 12 nests and about 36 eggs (depending on the size you make them of course!)
For another Easter themed dessert, check out my Chick Egg Cookies from last year!
What a cute idea and it all looks SO good! I pretty much can’t resist cookie dough, let alone bundles of chocolate!
These are so sweet. And I’ll take cookie dough over a Peep, even when it’s not offered up in a perfect little nest!
SOOO cute! I love looking at your site and getting new ideas!
These are absolutely adorable! That’s such an amazing idea, using eggless cookie dough! I can’t wait to try some of these for myself. I actually made a very similar baking project this past Easter, using Cadbury mini eggs and chocolate macaroons as the “nests”. It’s on my blog, if you’d like to take a look :)