Bird's Nest Cupcakes

Spring is rapidly approaching. The last few weeks I have seen birds foraging for the best nest building material, and slowly tucking it away in the tall trees in the corner of my yard. I've even seen a few eggs! Robin's eggs are one of the most beautiful natural colors. Growing up it was even my favorite crayon shade. I was inspired by Bake at 350's cupcakes last year, and knew I would try them out this spring.
Obviously not as lovely as hers, but at least no eggs were broken while I was making them. I used by standby sugar cookie recipe. As I already had a leftover batch of frosting laying around, I opted out of the royal icing decorations. As I was attempting to speckle the eggs, I realized this was a mistake. As Bake at 350 had used royal icing, her speckles smoothly sunk into the icing when the brown dye was mixed with water. As I had used an oil based frosting to ice the cookies, I should have mixed my brown dye with a few drops of oil to have the same effect. My water on top of oil mixture led them to dry in a less than attractive manner, giving them the appearance of moldy cookies as my partner pointed out. OOPS! So now you know. It might be easier to just use royal frosting, which is going to look a lot smoother anyways. So much for being resourceful this time.
Just top your cupcakes with a mound of frosting, roll them in toasted coconut, and stick the mini eggs on toothpicks into the cake. I couldn't mind a mini egg stencil, so I free handed them with a paring knife and tried to smooth the dough's edges with my fingertips prior to baking. I also tried to have lots of various shades in the toasted coconut to make them appear more nest like.
This was a lot of fun, and I'm sure little kids would love getting involved in this project. Have you been crafty in the kitchen lately?