Holiday Baking & Crafting with the Kids ~ #HolidayCandy #CBias

Family Time: Bake & Craft with your Kids
~ Get Creative with Nestle Candy this Holiday ~
Nestle #HolidayCandy #CBias Mama Luvs Books
 
What’s better than spending time having fun with the kids this holiday season? One thing I really love doing with the kids is baking. I can bake better than I can cook, and the kids love getting involved in the kitchen when they hear the beep of the oven preheating and the clashing sounds of bowls and spoons coming out of the cabinets. I love baking because it’s precise, organized, and it’s fun to see what you can create.  It’s also very educational for kids because they get to work on measuring skills, building small motor skills, and it helps encourage creativity.
I showed the kids some cool holiday recipes on the Nestle Recipe Site, and they decided we could make two of the recipes (the chocolate chip cookie sleds and marshmallow snowmen) along with creating a Nestle craft of our own to build an entire Winter Wonderland Village. I thought this might be a bit ambitious, but I was willing to give it a try with the kids. They were excited about it, so I was excited about it. Baking is always something we like to do together for some fun family time over the holidays, so why not create a village?
Let me show you what we did. First, we started with the marshmallow snowmen. We even had a neighbor friend come over to help us. The kids had a blast making these. Overall the snowmen were easy to make for the kids, although they would get impatient waiting for the frosting to harden, so when they put the hats on the snowmen and they would lean over. It does say in the recipe to put them on right before serving. Here’s the recipe and photos of us making them:
Ingredients:

  • 12 squares NESTLÉ® TOLL HOUSE® Refrigerated Chocolate Chip Cookie Bar Dough
  • 12 NESTLÉ® BUTTERFINGER® or CRUNCH® Jingles, unwrapped
  • 12 pretzel checkerboard snaps or mini pretzels for hat base
  • 2/3 cup prepared white frosting
  • 24 large marshmallows, divided
  • 12 pretzel sticks for arms, broken in half
  • NESTLÉ® TOLL HOUSE® Semi-Sweet Chocolate Mini Morsels for eyes and buttons (a heaping teaspoon needed)
  • 12 small orange candies or orange decorating gel for nose
  • Thin-string licorice, various colors, cut into twelve, 7-inch pieces for scarves
Directions:
PREPARE 12 cookies as directed on package. Cool on baking sheet for 2 minutes; remove to wire rack to cool completely.

TO MAKE HATS, ADHERE Jingles to pretzel snaps with frosting. Set aside.

TO MAKE SNOWMEN, INSERT 2 pretzel sticks into each side of 12 marshmallows to create arms on base of snowman. Spread a heaping teaspoon of frosting onto center of each cookie; top with snowman base. Press down lightly. Spread additional frosting on top of each snowman base. Top with remaining 12 marshmallows. Dip orange candies and mini morsels into frosting and add noses, eyes and buttons to snowmen. For scarf, tie each piece of licorice loosely around neck of snowman using frosting as glue, if necessary. Let both hats and snowmen bases stand for 20 minutes to set frosting and make snowmen stable.

PRIOR TO SERVING, adhere hats to snowman head with frosting. If snowmen need to set up more, lean them against a glass or can to set. 

 

Nestle #HolidayCandy #CBias Mama Luvs Books

And the best is that the kids could do it all by themselves, and that they had a blast doing it. Our neighbor friend said, “I like coming over here. You guys always have so much fun. I love making these.” Of course we let her take home the snowmen that she made. She was very proud of her snowmen and shared them with her family for dessert.

Nestle #HolidayCandy #CBias Mama Luvs Books
 
The next thing we did to create our Winter Wonderland was to make the chocolate chip cookie sleds. These were SUPER easy to make a would be a fun treat to take to a holiday party this season. Of course the kids could make these on their own as well. It only took minutes to assemble them. See recipe and photos below:
Ingredients:   
 Directions:
PREHEAT oven to 325° F. Grease or foil-line a large baking sheet.

PLACE whole bar of dough on prepared baking sheet. Allow to soften for 5 to 10 minutes. Using fingertips, pat dough gently to form an 11 x 8-inch rectangle.

BAKE for 18 to 20 minutes or until light golden brown. Cool on baking sheet for 10 minutes; remove to wire rack to cool completely. Gently slide cookie onto cutting board. Trim edges of rectangle as needed.

CUT cookie into 4 x 2-inch rectangles, or to about the length of the candy canes you will be using. (Cut in half lengthwise and you should have 2 long rectangles that are 4 inches wide. Cut each long rectangle into 5 pieces. This should give you ten 4 x 2-inch rectangles.) Use about 1 teaspoon frosting on backside of cookies to attach candy canes (1 teaspoon per candy cane should do). Let stand for 30 minutes or until set. Once set, turn the sled over so the candy canes are on the bottom.

SPRINKLE sled with glitter (to look like snow), if desired. Fill sled with candies.

Nestle #HolidayCandy #CBias Mama Luvs Books
Nestle #HolidayCandy #CBias Mama Luvs Books
Nestle #HolidayCandy #CBias Mama Luvs Books
The final addition to our village was a creation from my own brain. We wanted to make a craft that we could use to decorate with around the house or even give as a gift to others. I thought it might be cute to have holiday Candy Christmas Trees on the mantle to use as a decoration. I found some yummy Nestle Miniatures at Walmart, so I thought why not get some foam cones and pins and just pin the candy on to look like trees? I wasn’t sure if the kids could do it or how it would look in the end, but it turned out great. The kids really liked the idea. They even decided to put the candy into patterns on their trees, as well as stick a Nestle Jingle on the top for a star. They had no problems pinning the candy and they really had fun being creative and making these trees. 
Nestle #HolidayCandy #CBias Mama Luvs Books
  
The last step was putting together our Wheeler’s Winter Wonderland that the kids had envisioned all along! I got some white material we could use to put on the mantle, and then we had the treats to build our scene. We can probably only leave the snowmen and sleds out for a couple of days, but the trees can look pretty and last a while. Kendal begged to bring one of the trees she made to her teacher as a gift, so I let her do that today. She was very proud of her creation. 
Happy Holidays everyone! Remember, this is a time of the year about sharing, celebrating, and spending time together. Having this special baking and crafting time with the kids means a lot to them and it will to YOU too. I’m sure this will become another one of our holiday traditions in our house. They are going to beg me to do it every year because they had so much fun!
Nestle #HolidayCandy #CBias Mama Luvs Books
Nestle #HolidayCandy #CBias Mama Luvs Books
   
Kendal Headed to School This Morning…..
Nestle #HolidayCandy #CBias Mama Luvs Books
  
 HAPPY HOLIDAYS!!!
To view our entire shopping trip, check out the Google+ Album we created. Also, don’t forget to visit Nestle on Twitter and Facebook as well!
I am a member of the Collective Bias®  Social Fabric® Community.  This shop has been compensated as part of a social shopper insights study for Collective Bias™ and Nestle #CBias #SocialFabric. All opinions are mine and mine alone.   
Kristin

Comments

  1. Such cute ideas! So creative 🙂

  2. SUPER CUTE IDEAS!

  3. Those pictures are fantastic number one, number two; you all did a fantastic job with this tasty craft! The finished project is amazing! I’m tackling a boxed gingerbread house today, so kudos to you for doing this from scratch!

  4. Those little snowmen put a smile on my face!!!

    Dawn

  5. The timing on this is perfect: we’re doing our holiday baking on Sunday and I am on the hunt for kid-friendly ideas. Thanks!

  6. I love that village. My boys would love to create one, but I fear it would be bare within a day or two.

  7. I love that village too. That is a lot of fun for the whole family. Happy holidays

  8. Your kids looked like they were having a blast!

  9. That is all so cute! I love baking at Christmas time!

  10. I love the sleighs!!! What a great gift. 🙂

  11. Oh those are so adorable and definitely Delicious!!! 🙂

  12. Adorable! I love crafting/creating and baking with my kids this time of year. I think memories of making things this time of year are so much more important than the gifts under the tree (just don’t tell them!) Great job using all the best Nestle classics! I wanted to lick my computer screen.

  13. OH my goodness. I am hungry just looking at all of this! What fun ideas to do with older kids.

  14. Love the sled!! What a great way to spend time with your kids!!

  15. Those are entirely too cute! I especially love the trees.

  16. That’s amazing! I love it. When my little ones are older i’m definitely doing this. We love baking but I don’t think S’s attention would hold to make the whole village 🙂

  17. Super adorable. I have to pin this!

  18. Looks like SO much fun!! 🙂

  19. What great ideas! I love festive crafts that the kids can help with, especially when they are edible!

  20. Thanks for the great ideas!! LOVE these! 🙂

  21. Awesome ideas! I’ll show this to my little boy and ask him if he’d love to make this with me.
    Thanks a lot!

  22. I love the Christmas trees. What a great idea! Thanks for sharing.

  23. what awesome ideas – and now I want candy 😉

  24. What cute ideas!! Looks like a blast that they had!

  25. These are SO AWESOME! What fun!

  26. My husbands co-workers love me this time of year. I love to bake with the kids but none of us like eating sweets here so he takes it to work. Those are such cute thins you made I am going to attempt to make some.

  27. What awesome ideas! Seriously, even I, craft challenged me, could pull these off! Not to mention my kids would love me for letting them get all messy with tasty treats.

  28. Love the Christmas trees! The kids did a great job!

  29. Chocolate chip cookies are my favorite. Thanks for the tips on how to jazz it up for the holidays!

  30. These are just an adorable idea. My kids would love to make these and hand them out to their friends.

  31. Everything here is SO CUTE!!! I look forward to the day that Benjamin is old enough to do things like this! 🙂

  32. I love the snowmen!

  33. What a great activity with kids. I love the snowman too

  34. <3 the creativity that comes out this time of year. These are absolutely adorable!

  35. Super cute ideas!

  36. Love Love Love the little sleds!

  37. Really fun ideas, and it looks like everyone had fun creating together!
    I would like to try the tree decorations with the grandchildren.

  38. These are so cute and looks like a great family night!

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