We are in full-blown holiday mode over here. If you are too, we think you’ll love these easy winter themed snacks to make with kids. They earn bonus points for being FUN, simple, and tasty.
First, I full acknowledge that baking with kids is messy. It would have been way easier for me to make these alone and then just let the kids eat, but that’s not nearly as fun.
TIP: sort your ingredients, tools, and bowls/pans ahead of time. I also decided to combine the mess and make all the treats on the same day. It took us just under two hours to do all three. Spreading them out on different days may be a better bet next time. Still, we only ended up with one major mess and that was during clean up when the candy pieces went everywhere. Charlotte rushed to eat as many as possible before we could clean them up. ha!
Charlotte helped me pick up the grocery order earlier this week. As I was checking the order and pulling other items from the pantry, she went to town stacking as many ingredients as possible.
Festive Brownie Trees
Ingredients: boxed brownie mix, frosting (food dye, if desired), mini candy canes, sprinkles / chips, etc.
TIP: if you’re making all three treats on the same day, start with the brownies. This way they can cook and cool while you’re working on the other ones.
After the brownies have cooled, cut into triangles. We couldn’t find any green icing, so we used a few drops of gel color. Then we snipped the corner of sandwich baggies and let the kids squeeze the icing on. Carter opted to go for a self-portrait. He made his head, body, and arms. Charlotte’s was more abstract.
Then decorate the icing with your favorite toppings. We used sprinkles and little rainbow chips.
Gently push a mini candy cane in for the trunk. TIP: it was easier to push the trunk into brownies that weren’t part of the edge, so when you’re cutting your triangles make sure the “bottom” isn’t an edge piece.
Snow Pudding Cups
Ingredients: prepared instant pudding, Oreos, extra creamy Cool Whip, gel writing icing, 9 oz serving cups
Full disclosure: this treat didn’t go quite as planned, but it still really tasty and fun!
First, make the instant pudding. It will take 5 minutes to set, so while that’s happening crush the Oreos. We used 2 Oreos per cup and put them in a sandwich bag to crush. Charlotte was able to help with this part by smacking the sandwich baggie on the table. A lot.
Then spoon the crushed Oreos into serving cups.
Once the pudding has set, spoon it on top of the crushed Oreos. Ours made 5 cups.
Here’s where our treats went sideways. The goal was to add snowmen to the top of each cup by piping the Cool Whip out of a sandwich baggie and then drawing faces on with gel writing icing, but our snowmen just ended up looking dripping and sad. I wish I had snapped a picture!! So instead we decided to decorate the top with festive toothpicks.
The good news? The treats turned out just as tasty either way!
BONUS: I had also planned to scoop these cute little snowmen on top of hot cocoa. If yours turn out, they would be cute together for a snack.
Reindeer Trail Mix
Ingredients: salted popcorn, mini pretzels, vanilla candy coating, M&Ms, mini marshmallows, sprinkles
You could pop your own popcorn, but we opted to go with store bought. Salted or kettle corn are great, but nothing too buttery. Poor the popcorn into a bowl and stir to coat with melted vanilla candy coating. We used the whole bag of popcorn (4 oz bag / 15 cups) and the whole container of candy coating (16 oz).
And yes, Carter missed here and the popcorn went all over the table. ha!
We ended up splitting the mix into two bowls to make it easier to coat evenly. We used 4 cups of pretzels, the entire bag of mini marshmallows (10 oz), the entire bag of M&Ms (10 oz) and almost the entire shaker of sprinkles. We had some red/green sprinkles left over, but they weren’t quite enough so we opted to mix in some rainbow sprinkles too.
Here comes the best part… eating!
I decided to top with a reindeer pick since we already had them out for the failed snowman cups.
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