Easy Christmas Treats and Sweets for Children to Make

Christmas is the perfect time to cook with your child or grandchildren. Dust off the family cookbooks and devote an afternoon to making special family sweets and treats. There are some simple things you can do when cooking with children to make the experience a fun one and not a complete disaster with sugar and flour everywhere!

First, print up the recipes in simple clear language that the child can either read easily. Simplify the steps. Help them gather the ingredients before they begin cooking with you. Make sure the adult in charge, handles any hot or dangerous tasks like sautéing on the stove or pouring boiling liquids. Kids can handle a lot of cooking tasks with some simple guidance and instruction. Let them do the work and don't worry about the mess, because part of the experience is cleaning up afterwards while listening to favorite Christmas music.

Sweets and treats are the first things that come to mind when cooking with children at Christmas. They can be made ahead and then the children can package them and give as gifts.

Easy low cook truffles

Ingredients to gather:

1 c. of graham crackers, ½ c. of butter, 14 oz can of condensed milk, 4 T. shredded coconut, 4 T. cocoa powder, 1 t. vanilla, chopped nuts, sprinkles, cocoa powder, various decorating sprinkles, mini cupcake liners to hold the finished truffles.

Step one: Melt the butter in a sauce pan over low heat. Remove from heat and let cool slightly.

Step two: Break the graham crackers into a plastic Ziploc bag and let the child crush them with a rolling pin, until they are fine crumbs.

Step three: Add the crushed crackers, the can of condensed milk, the vanilla, the cocoa power and the coconut to the melted butter, mixing it all together.

Step four: Spoon the mixture into a butter square shallow pan, spreading it level. Put in the refrigerator to cool.

Step five: Cut the mixture in 1 and ½ squares with a knife. Then roll each square into a ball between your fingers. You might want to have the child dip their fingers in either cocoa powder or powdered sugar as they roll. Put more cocoa, coconut, nuts and sprinkles onto separate small bowls and roll the truffle balls in topping. Set finished rolled truffle into mini cupcake liner or candy liner. Should make about 16 to 20 truffles.

Cheese Ball Snowman

For a special Christmas party or appetizer, your child can make this simple Snowman Cheese Ball that will be as much fun to eat as to make. He's almost too cute, but he'll make a perky little accompaniement to crackers or mini bagels.

Step one: Take two 8 oz packages of cream cheese and blend in the mixer with ½ t. garlic salt, ½ t. white pepper, and 2 T. finely minced onion or 1 t. onion powder.

Step two: Form the cream cheese mixture into two balls, one slightly larger for the body of the snowman, and one smaller for his head. You may have to refrigerate him at this point to let him get nice and chilled and formed.

Step three: Decorate your snowman! Then the fun part begins for the child when you decorate the snow man. Use raisins for his eyes, mouth and buttons. Use a tiny end of real carrot for his nose. Layer a large wafer cracker spread with thin amount of cream cheese and topped with three more Ritz type crackers to make a top hat, layering and "glueing" them together with more cream cheese between. Add a parsley sprig (optional) for decoration on his hat, or perhaps a bit of holly and red berries. Just don't eat the holly or the berries! Break pretzels to form his arms and you can even baby a corncob pipe by using half an ear of baby corn with a toothpick to secure it. For his scarf, trim the edges of red or green fruit leather to fringe it and wrap around his neck for the perfect winter accessory.

Christmas Tree Suckers

Step one: Using either a batch of homemade sugar cookie dough of your choice or refrigerated sugar cookie dough, roll the dough to 1/8 inch thickness and cut out with tree shaped cookie cutters.

Step two: Then stack two cookies on top of each other with a ice cream craft stick between them. Bake until browned and done.

Step three: Cool and frost with green frosting. (you can buy a can of vanilla and tint it with green food coloring for easy colored icing)

Step four: Decorate with assorted items like licorice string for garland, mini M'm's for ornaments, red hots, chocolate chips, and sprinkles.

Barfi Fudge (Kids love the name of this East Indian treat)

Ingredients:

2 c. whole milk, 2 T butter, ¾ c. sugar, 2 c. ground blanched almonds, plus some whole almonds to top the fudge with.

Step one: Butter a large square of waxed paper.

Step two: A helping adult should bring the milk to a boil in a large heavy pan over high heat, stirring constantly until the milk is reduced by half. It should take about 10 minutes.

Step three: Add the sugar and the butter.

Step four: Gradually add the ground almonds, stirring constantly.

Step five: Cooking, until the mixture is stiff (about 3 minutes). Again, the adult has to help with the cooking.

Step six: Pour the fudge onto the waxed paper and spread it evenly to a thickness of about ½ inch. Let is cook and harden.

Step seven: Cut the fudge into diamond shapes and press a whole almond into each piece.

Step eight: Serve your Barfi Fudge to lots of giggling by the kids!