Here’s a recipe to make a different kind of Easter bird nest cookies—with a natural, low glycemic sugar and lots of peanut butter for protein. There are lots of recipes for no-bake bird nest cookies using Chinese noodles, chocolate chips, and either butterscotch or peanut butter chips. Then there are ordinary no-bake cookies usually made with oatmeal, cocoa powder, butter, milk, vanilla, lots of granulated sugar, sometimes some coconut, and sometimes some peanut butter.

I wasn’t too sure how much I would like Chinese noodles in cookies, and the “nests” made with them didn’t look much like the bird’s nests I was accustomed to seeing. There may be some birds that build nests with mostly twigs, but the nests I’ve seen appear to have been built with mostly straw. The chips used in these Chinese noodle cookies would probably either have regular sugar or artificial sweeteners. I did find a few bird nest recipes that used a typical no-bake cookie recipe instead of a Chinese noodles recipe. Some used muffin tins. Another had some crushed cornflakes instead of the Chinese noodles. Still others used thumbprint cookies and filled the center with “eggs.” They looked even less like nests than the Chinese noodles kind, to me.

I wanted to try to make some “nests” with a little oatmeal (which could be similar to chunks of mud), lots of unsweetened coconut (which reminds me of the shape of short pieces of straw), lots of peanut butter (the color of straw), and the natural sugar called “coconut sugar” (though it darkens the peanut butter a bit). Coconut sugar is made from the dried sap of palm tree blossoms, and it has a nice brown-sugar-like flavor. (“Low glycemic” means it raises your blood sugar more slowly, rather than a more rapid spike.)  If my recommendation of using unsweetened coconut and natural peanut butter are followed, the only regular sugar in my recipe would be in the candy eggs.

It took several failures before I came up with a recipe that was the right consistency to harden and a flavor that I found desirable. The rum extract, nutmeg, and allspice I decided to add seemed to be just what it needed, to make for a deeper, more interesting flavor.

I preferred using the chocolate and malted milk candy-coated eggs (similar to Whoppers candy), rather than the small candy-coated chocolate eggs. The malted milk eggs are lighter and easier to bite into. Another point in their favor is that they cost less. Unfortunately, the bag I purchased this year had eggs that varied greatly in size. Perhaps there is another brand that would have eggs more uniform in size. I did manage to find three different colors of similar size for all 24 cookies.

These cookies could definitely brighten your Easter table. And they could carry an Easter message, too. Eggs are a symbol of new life. Because of Jesus’ death and resurrection, all who repent of their sins and believe in Him can have new life. II Corinthians 5:17 says, “Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old things are passed away. Behold, all things have become new.” [World English Bible]

Below is my Easter cookie recipe. At the bottom you will be able to click on a link to print the recipe, if you’d like.

NO-BAKE EASTER BIRD NEST COOKIES

Makes 24 cookies

Need:

Wax Paper or Parchment Paper

Oats – 1 cup, quick or else old-fashioned pulsed in a food processor to break up the oats a little smaller

Coconut – 2 cups, preferably unsweetened

Creamy peanut butter – 1 cup, preferably natural with no sugar added

Malted milk mini Easter eggs (or small hard-candy-covered chocolate eggs)  – 72

Coconut sugar – 2 cups

Milk – 1/2 cup

Flour – 1 tablespoon

Nutmeg – 1/4 teaspoon

Allspice – 1/4 teaspoon

Rum extract – 2 teaspoons

Instructions:

1. Cover two large baking sheets with parchment paper or wax paper.
2. Place oats and coconut in a bowl and stir to mix.
3. Measure peanut butter in measuring cup. (All ingredients need to be ready to go, to make the process smooth.)
4. Lay candy eggs in groups of three, with varied colors in each group. (Clean, dry standard-size ice cube trays might be helpful.)
5. In a medium saucepan, place coconut sugar, milk, flour, nutmeg, and allspice. (The burner you use and the baking sheets should be in close proximity to each other.)
6. Whisk on medium heat and bring to a boil for one minute, then reduce heat to low.
7. Stir in extract, then peanut butter until well combined.
8. Add oats and coconut and stir until dry ingredients are well covered with the hot mixture.
9. Working fairly quickly, drop four large, heaping flatware teaspoonfuls of the mixture onto the parchment or wax paper, using another teaspoon to push the cookie mixture off the other teaspoon.  Use the back of one of the teaspoons to shape the “nest” and make a shallow indentation for the eggs, as in a bird nest. Gently press three candy eggs into each “nest.”
10. Wasting no time, follow those steps for groups of four for the rest of the cookies.
11. Cool the cookies for an hour. Remove with a pancake turner. If they are a little soft, refrigerate to harden.

When the cookies are well hardened, you could store them in a covered 9×13 pan, with wax paper or parchment paper between the layers.

No-bake cookies should be stored in an air-tight container and can last a week at room temperature, two to three weeks refrigerated, or two to three months in the freezer.

To see a printable copy of the recipe, CLICK HERE.