Over the last three weeks the baking buddies have been getting into the spirit of Christmas by making a variety of festive goodies to take home and share with their families.Following each Christmas baking sessions the children have discussed Christmas and shared stories. Some of the buddies have then had the opportunity to create craft related to those discussions. All the results can be seen in the photo selection below.

Christmas Tarts

One of our buddies had requested that we bake jam tarts. To give these a more festive feel we adapted the recipe and filled our tarts with mincemeat and decorated them with a star. The children made their own short crust pastry and used cutters to make the tart base and cutters for the star shaped decoration.

Cinnamon and Vanilla Stars

This recipe was for a basic biscuit recipe that we adapted slightly by adding cinnamon and vanilla to the ingredients.

When we introduce our recipe each week we spend time looking at all the ingredients and talking about them. The children are encouraged to smell the ingredients before we use them describing what they notice or if they like it.  Some of the buddies recognised the smell of vanilla from ice cream and sweets they had before.

As we made star shapes we discussed where we see the star and how relates to Christmas. This week we were very lucky to get invited along to see the nursery nativity as our biscuits cooked in the oven.

Reindeer Cake Pops

This recipe is called a cake pop because a lollipop stick is used to stick onto the end of a ball of cake to create a lollipop cake. The buddies decorated the cake pops with melted chocolate and cake decorations to make a reindeers face.

For this recipe the children had to crumble up a ready bought Christmas cake. We added a vanilla flavoured butter icing which is mixed in together and dough is made. The buddies rolled the dough into smaller balls and they were put in the freezer to harden slightly. The cake pops were then dipped into the chocolate and decorations added.

Snowmen

Whilst we waited for the cake pops to harden in the freezer the children used a selection of marshmallows, melted chocolate, fruit string chews and cake decorations to make their own snowmen lollipops.