Christmas tree crunchy cake pops

A riot of festive green in my kitchen

I spotted this cool recipe in January’s Good Food mag as part of their festive kitchen projects spread. I needed something fun for our home-made goodies stand at the school Christmas Fair and this fitted the bill perfectly.

They really caught people’s eyes and sold well – so definitely a recommendation if you’ve got a similar event coming up.

They are VERY messy to make, but the final result was worth the sticky strands of melted marshmallow, splodges of green icing and the crunch of hundreds and thousands under my feet.

You can get your kids involved with making them – but perhaps put a groundsheet down first and put them in old clothes.

Crispy Christmas tree pops from BBC Good Food January

makes 12

200g marshmallows
3 tbsp golden syrup
100g rice krispies
12 waffle ice cream cones
500g icing sugar
green food colouring
assorted sprinkles and writing icing

useful equipment
cake pop sticks (I used wooden sticks lifted from a popular coffee shop chain)
block of florists oasis (still in its plastic wrapper or wrapped in cling film)

1. In a pan melt the marshmallows and syrup and then stir in the rice krispies until well coated.

2. Using a teaspoon quickly fill each cone with as much mixture as you can gently pack in without cracking them. Push a stick down into the centre of each filled cone and then place all of them in the fridge to chill for an hour.

3. In a large bowl, mix the icing sugar with about half a teaspoon of green food colouring (or as much as you need to get a good colour) and little splashes of water until you get a nice thick icing that’ll coat the cones easily.

4. One by one, dip your cones into the green icing tip first, swirl around to get a good coating and then wait for it to stop dripping off in large volumes and stick into your block of oasis. Loads more icing will run off so make sure your oasis is covered and sitting on something that can be wiped. Then sprinkle with decorations to your heart’s content.

Tip: You need to work quickly so the icing isn’t drying before you’ve decorated them – I did mine it two batches of six

5. Leave until dry to the touch and then loosely enclose with cellophane gift bags tied at the stick with ribbon.

The trees fitted in beautifully amongst the festive wares of the home-made goodies stall