Every Easter, my fiance’s mom makes peanut butter nests for her sons to take home. They are made with chow mein noodles, mixed in a melted peanut butter sauce, shaped into little nests and topped with egg-shaped chocolate candies. And I absolutely love them! I look forward to eating more than my share of them each year, but this year I just couldn’t wait.
I had a craving for something chocolatey and peanut buttery so, I decided to make mine with semi-sweet chocolate as well as peanut butter. We were visiting my fiance’s brother and his wife last weekend, so I used them as an excuse to make the recipe!
They try to eat vegan as much as possible, so when I began assembling the ingredients for this recipe and realized how simple this recipe would be to make vegan, I did so! You can easily make these Vegan Chocolate Peanut Butter Nests non-vegan if you so choose.
Ingredients:
1 (12 oz) package chow mein noodles
1 cup roasted unsalted peanuts
12 oz vegan semi-sweet chocolate morsels
1 cup creamy peanut butter
~12 oz Jordan almonds or dark chocolate covered almond “eggs” (or any other candy that is egg-shaped if not making vegan) — you’ll need roughly 85 egg shaped pieces
Line three cookie sheets with parchment paper.
Add the peanuts and noodles to a large bowl and mix to combine.
Add the semi-sweet chocolate morsels and peanut butter to a small pot over medium heat.
Stir until melted and smooth.
Add the chocolate peanut butter mixture to the noodles and peanuts and stir to combine.
You want the mixture to be completely coated in the chocolate peanut butter.
Scoop out a heaping tablespoon of the mixture and add to the parchment paper. Use the spoon to form it into a round-ish “nest” with a slight indent in the center.
Add two two four (however many fit depending on the size of your nest) Jordan almonds or other egg-shaped treat into the nest.
Repeat with the rest of the mixture and your almonds/candies. You should end up with about 28 nests. Let cool completely on the parchment paper.
I made some of these with speckled milk chocolate eggs, because they were so cute and I couldn’t resist. (These ones are obviously not vegan)
I love anything with a peanut butter/chocolate combination and this recipe was no exception!
Jordan almonds aren’t my favorite, so I was happy to have some with milk chocolate eggs. If only I had picked up the dark chocolate eggs instead!
These little nests make a great spring / Easter dessert, and hold up nicely for travel. If you’re a big peanut butter fan, this recipe could stand to have a touch more, so maybe add another 1/4-1/2 cup of peanut butter to the chocolate mixture before heating if you really want the peanut butter taste to stand out.
- 1 (12 oz) package chow mein noodles
- 1 cup roasted unsalted peanuts
- 12 oz vegan semi-sweet chocolate morsels
- 1 cup creamy peanut butter
- ~12 oz Jordan almonds or dark chocolate covered almond “eggs” (or any other candy that is egg-shaped if not making vegan) — you’ll need roughly 85 egg shaped pieces
- Line three cookie sheets with parchment paper.
- Add the peanuts and noodles to a large bowl and mix to combine.
- Add the semi-sweet chocolate morsels and peanut butter to a small pot over medium heat.
- Stir until melted and smooth.
- Add the chocolate peanut butter mixture to the noodles and peanuts and stir to combine. You want the mixture to be completely coated in the chocolate peanut butter.
- Scoop out a heaping tablespoon of the mixture and add to the parchment paper. Use the spoon to form it into a round-ish “nest” with a slight indent in the center.
- Add two two four (however many fit depending on the size of your nest) Jordan almonds or other egg-shaped treat into the nest.
- Repeat with the rest of the mixture and your almonds/candies. You should end up with about 28 nests. Let cool completely on the parchment paper.
What do you think?