Playing with Food: Holiday Eats and Treats Your Kids Can Build Themselves

The holidays mean that the treats are flowing like a river. A delicious river of cocoa and gingerbread rafts! Sure, you have the standard gingerbread house and maybe a few dozen snowflake-shaped cookies. But what else can you make to celebrate the holidays in a festively fabulous way? There are plenty of holiday eats and treats that you can whip up — with the kids’ help too!

Check out the imaginative awesomeness that your kiddo’s can create, and all with food. Oh, and don’t forget to snap a few fun pics as your family cooks, bakes and builds a super-cool stockpile of holiday treats. When the treating, and eating, is done you can turn the photos into a “Happy Holidays” keepsake book.

Create an edible set of snow people or create a snow family. Each family member can make a mini version of themselves with baked goods. Cover donut holes or cupcakes with their tops cut off with white frosting. Sprinkle shredded coconut on top and stack the faux snow! Add facial features, a scarf or other accessories with cute little candy bits.

Forget about one single solitary gingerbread house. Go big this year and have the kiddo’s craft an entire gingerbread village. Unfold a cardboard box, making a base for the town. Coat the board with cotton or white frosting. Add more than one or two gingerbread buildings and adorn the entire winter wonderland with gumdrop trees, peppermint street signs and anything else your child can dream up.

Does your gingerbread house town need a focal point? Build one house up and up and up, until it becomes a skyscraper that truly stands out. Not only is this a fun way to “play” with food, but it’s also an engineering challenge for your child. Your creative kid will need to figure out how to balance each level on the next as they engineer the totally tall structure.

Building doesn’t always have to equal constructing a piece of architecture. Okay, okay. So designing buildings is beyond fun for your child. But there’s so much more to learn. Flip the building activities around and “build words” instead of structures. Bake a batch, or a few, of alphabet-shaped cookies. Help your child to frost them, add sprinkles, nuts or other toppings and then let the spelling begin. Build holiday words, such as “Christmas” or “gift,” or construct entire sentences.

If shushing down a snowy ski slope isn’t in your holiday vacation plan, have the kids build their own mini mountain — in the kitchen. Bake a cake in layers, and have the kids help you to cut it into a ski slope shape. Frost the cake with white icing and add opal sprinkles on top to make it sparkle. Your kids can create mini skis out of licorice twists and then have their dolls and action figures race down the slope.

You have zillions of holiday cookies just hanging around. Put them to use and have the kids build with them. Whether you’re baking a favorite sugar cookie recipe or you’re all about chocolate chips, the kids can help you measure and mix as you create dozens of homemade treats. After the cookies have cooled, the kids can build snowflake designs, Christmas trees or anything else that they want. Place the cookies onto wax paper in the pattern/design that the kids plan, frost them, dot on decorations and…like magic the kids have built a perfect holiday picture.

We hope you try some of these fun Christmas treat ideas with your family – we are sure they will love them!