Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and set aside.
Preheat the oven to 200°F.
Fit a piping bag (or zip-top bag with the corner snipped off) with a large star tip. You can make these nests without a piping tip, your nests just won’t have a ridged design.
Place all the ingredients in the top portion of a double boiler or in a heat-safe bowl over a pan with a small amount of boiling water in the bottom.
Gently heat the egg white mixture, whisking constantly, until the mixture is foamy and slightly warmed. This should take 3-5 minutes.
Pour the warmed mixture into the large bowl of a stand mixer with the whisk attachment.
Whisk on high speed for about 5 minutes, or until the mixture is a light gold color and stiff peaks form.
Use a rubber spatula to scoop the meringue mixture into the prepared piping bag.
Pipe about half of the mixture into 12, 2 to 3-inch circles on the baking tray. Add a little in the center of the circle so there isn’t a hole in the middle.
Pipe the remaining half of the meringue in a ring on top of the outer edge of the first circles.
Bake in the preheated oven for an hour and a half.
After the time is up, turn off the oven and leave the meringues in there for another hour or so to cool down gradually.
Remove the finished meringues from the oven and let them finish cooling at room temperature. They will be soft to the touch when warm but will get crispy as they cool.
Fill with whatever kind of candies you’d like to use as eggs.
Notes
Baked meringue gradually loses its crunch when exposed to humid air, so store these in an airtight container at room temperature.
If you’re feeling really ambitious you can color a small amount of the meringue with natural food color and pipe little eggs directly into the nests before baking. Just use a bag with the very end snipped off for piping.