How to make Holiday Wreath Cookies with your Kids and not Lose your Mind!

Have you ever made Holiday Wreath Cookies? My Grandma used to make us a tray full of Christmas cookies each year, and she always included these Holiday Wreath Cookies! I loved them as they taste very similar to Rice Krispie treats. They are an easy recipe with few ingredients, and they look so festive! Since you will be working with hot marshmallows, kids definitely need adult supervision. Also, you will need to work fast to shape them while the marshmallow mixture is still warm or you’ll end up with one big clump!

I had these dreams of making these with my kids and us having fun and having a lovely holiday memory, and then reality set in! It was kind of a funny experience. I’m warning you and giving you some helpful tips, so maybe you won’t have to experience the bits of chaos making these that we did. They really are an easy thing to make if you plan well.

I thought I started off with a good plan. I had my boys ages 11 and 8 read the recipe while they were eating lunch. It seemed pretty straight forward. I explained to them that the marshmallow and butter mixture would be hot, so I would have to stir it and pour it onto the cereal. Then we would have to wet our hands with a little cold water and move quickly to shape the marshmallow cereal mixture into wreaths. I gave my 11 yr old the job of shaping them and my 8-year-old the job of putting the little red hots on the wreaths once they were shaped.

While they each did great at their individual jobs, apparently halfway through they thought they should switch jobs. My 11 yr old added about 10 more red hots to each wreath, and my 8 yr old tried to shape a few and got the cereal mixture stuck all over his hands and of course once that starts to happen it just gets worse from there. He turned into a big gooey marshmallow monster! So, I had to have him quickly rinse his marshmallow hands in warm water, while still trying to get the cereal mixture shaped into wreaths before it dried. You can also butter your hands, but my kids have sensitivities to textures, so they didn’t want to butter their hands. Instead, just getting their hands a little damp with cold water worked best for us! The extra red hots wouldn’t have been that big of a deal, but we were making these for a Community Christmas Program and needed them to look nice. Also, not everyone loves that many red hots, and we needed to be sure we had enough for all of the wreaths. Cooking with kids can be an interesting experience at times, but I actually love to bake with them. I now wish I had taken pictures of the messy moments, but I was too busy helping them. I also called my husband who was working at home to come and help me by the 2nd batch, so I could take some pictures.

Here are my tips for making these Holiday Wreaths:

• Help your children measure the correct amount of cereal. This is a great learning experience (Math). We used 5 1/2 cups of cornflakes that they had to measure out and put in a big bowl.
  
• Have an adult melt the butter and marshmallows on the stove, add the food coloring, and then pour the hot mixture over the cereal. Stir well to completely cover cereal.
  
• Next place spoonfuls of the mixture on waxed paper.
  
• Make sure hands are either buttered or damp with cool water when forming the wreaths to prevent the mixture from sticking to your hands. Work quickly to be sure it doesn’t dry before you shape it.
  
• Have kids place the red hots neatly on the wreaths. Make sure they don’t add 10-12 unless you all really like Red Hots.
  
• Put them in the fridge for 30 minutes or a cool place to dry, and make sure it’s out of the reach of any furry pets! We stored them in Rubbermaid containers on waxed paper with waxed paper in between layers.

We used this recipe from Hallmark’s website. This is a pretty easy recipe just have a game plan of how you are going to form the wreaths and if you have kids make sure they know what to do and when to do it. It has to be done pretty quickly or as the marshmallow mixture hardens it will stick together in one clump! Have fun and make great holiday memories! https://ideas.hallmark.com/recipes/dessert-recipes/christmas-wreath-cookie-recipe/