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Christmas Recipes for Children in Cornwall
Get Santa’s little helpers together to bake some festive treats this winter. Dig out their aprons, roll up their sleeves and cook up some festive-spirit in the kitchen.
With the help of leading children’s cookery author and food expert Annabel Karmel, here are a couple of fun and simple recipes that are sure to wow your willing elves this Christmas.
Baked Potato Snowman
Ingredients
1 x 250g potato (oval)
1 x 90g potato (round)
180g butternut squash peeled
1 to 2 tbsp parmesan cheese, grated
2 baby carrots
Frozen peas
A slice of red pepper
A little cream cheese
How to make
- Prick the potatoes with a fork. Cook the potatoes in the microwave for 10 to 12 minutes on full power or in the oven for 45 minutes to 1 hour 200C/400 F (Gas 6) until cooked through in the middle.
- Cut a thin slice off the bases of the potatoes. Scoop out some of the cooked potato, making sure you leave a 1.5cm border.
- Slice the butternut squash into small cubes. Cook in boiling water for 8 to 10 minutes until soft. Mix half of the squash with the scooped out potato flesh and mash together. Season to taste and add the Parmesan cheese.
- Stuff both of the potatoes with the squash mixture.
- Put the large potato onto a plate and put the small potato on top to make the snowman’s head.
- Attach a small baby carrot for the nose and for the hat, attach peas for the eyes and for the buttons (you could use a dab of cream cheese as glue) and cut a smiley shaped mouth from a strip of red pepper.
Makes 1 snowman
Christmas Pudding Truffles
Ingredients
Truffles
75g unsalted butter
100g plain chocolate
75g raisins or dried cranberries cut in half
2 tbsp orange juice
1 X 300g ready-made ginger cake
Decoration
150g (6oz) ready to roll icing
Green and red food colouring
How to make
- Soak the raisins or cranberries in orange juice for about half an hour. Melt the butter and chocolate either over a pan of simmering water or in a microwave. Stir in the raisins or cranberries and then crumble in the cake. Mix well and leave to cool slightly.
- Place in the fridge for about 1 hour to firm up and then roll into 10 walnut sized balls.
- Colour 50g of the icing green roll out on a clean work surface dusted with a little icing sugar and cut into holly leaves using cutters.
- Colour 10g of the icing red and roll into berries.
- Roll out the remaining white icing and cut out 10 wiggly circles for the brandy butter and place these on top of each of the mini Christmas puddings.
- Decorate with the holly leaves and red berries (dampen the icing underneath to stick onto the cake).
Makes 12 truffle puddings
Annabel’s chilled meals make for the perfect winter warmer. Low in salt and a tasty way towards their 5-a-day, they taste just like homemade. For more information visit www.annabelkarmel.com or visit the chiller aisle at Sainsbury’s and Tesco.
Or try making these cute snowman taken from the book Fun Christmas Crafts to Make and Bake by Annie Rigg and Catherine Woram...
Marshmallow Snowmen
This is definitely a recipe for little hands! These cute chaps are such fun to make and look gorgeous on the Christmas table. Why not make one snowman for each person as a place setting?
Ingredients
200 g large white marshmallows
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coloured liquorice strips or fruit leather
chocolate-coated mint sticks (eg Matchmakers)
large chocolate drops
100 g white mini-marshmallows
icing sugar, for dusting
about 10 cocktail sticks
makes about 10
How to make
1 Place the marshmallows on a tray.
2 Push 2 large marshmallows onto each cocktail stick. Ask an adult to trim off any of the stick that is poking out of the top.
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3 Using the writing icing, pipe dots and lines of icing onto the face to make the eyes, nose and mouth.
4 Cut the liquorice strips or fruit leather into thin strips and carefully tie around the snowman's neck for a scarf.
5 To make the arms, break the chocolate-coated mint sticks in half and push into the sides of the large marshmallow.
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6 Pipe a small blob of icing onto the top of the snowman’s head and position a large chocolate drop on top. Pipe another blob of icing in the middle of the chocolate drop and stick a mini-marshmallow on the very top.
7 Finally, using the writing icing again, pipe dots down the front of the snowman to look like buttons.
8 Keep making snowmen like this until you have as many as you need to make a fabulous winter wonderland!
9 To serve, scatter icing sugar over the serving dish, arrange the snowmen on top and dust lightly with more sugar.
Taken from the book Fun Christmas Crafts to Make and Bake by Annie Rigg and Catherine Woram
Photo credit: Lisa Linda and Polly Wreford
Publisher: Ryland Peters and Small
