Easter Nests - Random Recipe 3

When Dom set this month's Random Recipe Challenge to cook something out of the first cookbook we ever owned, I was quite excited. I remembered the book well, but haven't looked at it for more years than I care to remember. It resides at my Mother's along with many of my old books, so I couldn't get my hands on it immediately. Finally, I got it. My learn to cook book: a children's book for the kitchen by Ursula Sedgwick. On the inside cover, an inscription which reminded me it was given to me for Christmas when I was eight years old by my Great Aunt Doris and Uncle Alf, both still alive in their 90s. Leafing through it, I was amazed at what a good book it was and that I had made pretty much everything in it. Having just had problems making my own marzipan with the Battenberg I made a couple of days ago, it made me laugh to see a recipe for Marzipan Dates which included making your own marzipan. And, I remember doing it. At the back of the book, it has a really useful table showing how many tablespoons of various ingredients weigh an ounce and the fact that 3 halfpennies weigh 1/2 an ounce. Half pennies? I'm not sure I can still remember them.

My slight concern that there might not be any chocolate recipes in the book was immediately banished; it did seem rather unlikely that a children's cookbook, even from the 70s, would fail to include any chocolate recipes. It contained three: chocolate mousse, crispy crackolates and chocolate drops. Crispy Crackolates it was. They would be just perfect for Easter as little nests that I could drop some eggs into. Easter eggs for CT sorted - hee hee!

• Melted 1oz unsalted butter in a pan with 1oz unbleached granulated sugar and 1 tbsp golden syrup.
• Mixed in 1oz cocoa.
• Added 1oz cornflakes and stirred until all covered with chocolate mixture.
• Spooned into 5 piles and tried to form them into some semblance of a nest.
• Left to set, then placed a few sugar coated chocolate eggs in the middle.

The nests worked really well, very chocolatey and not too sweet but slightly sticky. The stickiness was advantageous as it helped the eggs to stay put in the nest.

Thank you Dom for reuniting me with such an old friend and for allowing me to make such a quick and easy recipe.