Easter Egg Nest Cupcakes

Happy Easter everyone! I got this idea for cupcakes from a cupcake calendar I have which has recipes from the book 500 Cupcakes. They have these cute little Easter egg nests and I wanted to take it further and make it my own.

Easter Egg Nest Cupcakes

Vanilla cupcakes with chocolate frosting that is piped to look like a bird nest and topped with various easter candies (jelly bean eggs, special dark hershey chocolate eggs, and peeps!)

Ingredients:

1 cup sweet butter, softened
1 cup superfine sugar
2 cups self-rising flour
4 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
chocolate frosting (recipe follows)
easter egg candy
peeps

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 350F. Place 18 paper baking cups in muffin pans. Combine all the cupcake ingredients in a large bowl and beat with an electric mixer until smooth and pale, about 2-3 minutes. Spoon the batter into cups.

Bake for 20 minutes. Remove pans from oven and cool for 5 minutes. Then remove the cupcakes and cool on a rack

Chocolate Buttercream Frosting

Ingredients:

1 lb (4 sticks) of butter
2 lb bag of confectioners sugar, sifted
1 cup cocoa powder
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
1 tablespoon milk

Directions:

Mix the butter until creamy. Add vanilla extract and blend well. Slowly add powdered sugar about 1/2-1 cup at a time until completely combined. Slowly add cocoa powder until desired amount is achieved. If you want a more creamy frosting, add a little bit of milk. Mix on high to fluff about 1 minute.

Put 3/4 of frosting into a piping bag and pipe easter egg nests onto top of cupcakes (I used wilton tip # 32). Put the rest of the chocolate into another piping bag (with wilton tip # 233) and pipe along the nest to create little strings (to look like branches or twigs). OPTIONAL: I reserved a little bit of frosting before I added the chocolate and added green food coloring to make a couple leaves (with wilton tip # 67)

Top cupcakes with candy of your choice (jelly bean eggs, chocolate eggs, peeps). SUGGESTION: shave some chocolate and put on cupcakes so that it looks like dirt :)

These were so much fun to make! Enjoy!