How to make edible bird's nests

For a recent baby shower a cohost and my vice president of ideas, Angie, came up with the idea to make edible bird's nests filled with candy eggs as the party favor. The theme of the shower came from the bedding the mom-to-be had chosen.

Edible birds nests filled with pastel eggs were the perfect take away to go along with the theme! Upon googling, we found a fabulous recipe from Martha Stewart, of course!

This is what we learned, however. Shredded phyllo is not the same as phyllo that you find at the grocery store. Don't buy 4 packages of it! I found the shredded phyllo at Mediterranean Grocery on Park in Memphis. I bought 4 packages because I didn't read the amount on the recipe before I went. It really would have only taken one 16 oz package to make 30 nests.

The most important note is that it does not take 15-20 minutes! The first batch came out like charcoal. The second batch we did for 10 minutes and those were still a little crispy on the edges. Another tip is to not spread out the phyllo so much. The first batch we practically separated each strand and then put it in the muffin tins. After a couple of tries we figured out that wadding it up more than spreading it out, made better nests.

After letting the nests cool we added Cadbury mini eggs (the greatest candy EVER). We were lucky to be having the shower close to Easter so that we had lots of eggs/candy options! If you are having it at another time of the year, you can use Jordan almonds.

After the eggs were in the nests we carefully slipped them into cellophane bags. This is why the more compact instead of feathered out nests are better because when you try to put the feathered out ones in the bags, a lot of the nest breaks off.

Tie the bag closed and there you have it! The cutest shower favor ever:
Now I am not going to lie. These were hard to make. Once we got the hang of it, it was ok, but it took us several attempts to get it right. However, I highly recommend this project. Like childbirth, you soon forget how hard it was and are interested in trying it again! I also recommend making them at the location they need to be on the day of the shower! We made them at my house and transported them to the shower location. Once all put together they are bulky and delicate, so transportation is a little cumbersome.

The best thing is that this project was very inexpensive (if you calculate the actual cost of materials for the finished product and not the money we spent on the wrong phyllo and too many tubes of Cadbury mini eggs because someone couldn't just find a bag in the entire Northwest AR area!)

Here's the breakdown of the expenses:

1 16 oz package of shredded phyllo $3
1 bag Cadbury mini eggs $3
Cellophane bags $2.70
ribbon $1

So for an actual cost of less than $10 we were able to make 30 super cute party favors that matched the theme like nothing else could!