You ever came across a recipe and eventhough you followed all instructions thoroughly, the outcome was nowhere near the illustration? Recently I had this situation when I made a bird's nest of chocolate for a cake. It looked like a hair bun. In the following ible I will show you the original recipe and my experiments to find a better result. Have fun!

Step 1: Ingredients and Tools

100grams rice noodles
70grams chocolate
2 bowls
bain-marie
cling wrap

Step 2: First Try

Melt the chocolate in a bain-marie, break the rice noodles into smaller pieces and cover your 2 bowls with cling wrap. Since you stack them into each other to press the chocolate rice noodles into a nests shape, you only need to cover the top of 1 bowl and the bottom of the other bowl.

Step 3: Casting

Add the rice noodles to the molten chocolate and stir until the chocolate coated all noodles. Then fill the bottom bowl and drag some noodles to the top to achieve a nest-like look. Stack the top bowl into the bottom bowl and put them into the fridge for an hour.

Step 4: 1st Result

As you can see the nest is rather disappointing. Traces from folds of the cling wrap, the nest has rather thin edges with a thick bottom.

Step 5: Experiment

Lets check this procedure with different noodles. I picked buckwheat noodles because they are already brown and maybe don't need chocolate. The angel hair rice noodles are thinner and maybe produce a better nest. Since noodles stick to each other if you don't cook them with salt and press them into each other, I didn't need chocolate for this experiment.

Step 6: 2nd Result

After cooking the noodles I have put them into the moulds (bowls) and waited 1 hour to see the results.

The buckwheat noodles were also disappointing and without the dark brown colour.

The angel hair noodles were also mostly on the bottom of the nest.

Step 7: Idea

To achieve a thinner bottom of the nest with a higher edge I turned the bowl upside down and started laying the noodles from the mid.

Step 8: Adding Chocolate

This time I used a brush to add the chocolate on both sides. Waited for it to dry and the result was exactly what I wanted.

Step 9: Let's Make a Cake

For the cake I used the same recipe like in my Blossom Tart which was a finalist in the Flower Challenge.

Step 10: Final Result

As you can see I opted for fresh fruits instead of quail eggs when I served the cake. It was delicious and kids actually ate the nest. If its coated in chocolate they eat anything ..