Easter chick cookies

Inspired by the very talented Maki Ogawa's cute little chick cookies, I decided to make my own version, and we all know how that goes....

While searching for a ball shaped cookie recipe, I found a recipe for Snowball Cookies at The Baker Who Cooks and thought the kids would love the surprise of the chocolate inside.  However, I wanted to make mini-cookies, so I exchanged the Hershey Kiss for butterscotch chips.
(I also made some non-chick cookies with white and milk chocolate chips inside).
 
Some notes on the process:
* As I was rolling the dough into balls, I realized that I could use the pointed end of the butterscotch chip as the chicks beak.

* For the eyes, I melted some semi-sweet chocolate chips in a bowl, and used a ziplock bag as a pastry bag to dot on the eyes...not the greatest method, but it worked okay.

* To make the nest, I just used the left over melted chocolate to scribble onto the plate in a nest shape.  I then put it in the freezer for a half hour or so to harden.  Very easy!

* Maki used chocolate pens to decorate the eyes and beaks...but I had never heard of such a thing...so I looked on Amazon and found this cool product - Cuisipro Food Decorating Pen,  which looked like it could be very useful.

*  The cookie recipe calls for nuts, which I didn't have, so I just omitted them. (I don't get too hung up on the details when baking, but luckily it worked out this time.) 

* The recipe also does not use eggs, which makes it a good one to remember late at night when you have a sudden craving for something sweet but don't have any eggs...and let's be honest, how often does a lack of eggs in the house thwart all plans of making a decadent midnight treat.

The kids loved the little chicks, and devoured the entire batch in about an hour.  I think it was partly because I obviously wasn't monitoring them too closely and partly because the cookies were so small it made them very more-ish and hard to keep track of how many you had actually eaten.  
Oh well, that just means no cookies for me for breakfast tomorrow ;)

Below is the step-by-step process:

1. Divide up the cookie dough

2. Roll into ball shape

3. Push butterscotch chip into the center

4. Roll the dough around the chip

5. Make sure the top end of the chip sticks out slightly to form the beak

I made some plain ones, too, with chocolate chips and white chocolate chips

update: linking here