“Grandma? Can I please have a sleep-over with you?” Anna pleaded with a big smile on her face and blue eyes twinkling. “Of course,” I replied. “Oh, and Grandma, I’m bringing a Christmas tree craft we can make together,” she added. “Alrighty!” was my response.
“Well,” I thought, “I’m not much for crafts, but Anna is, so I’ll do my best.”
The first item on her “list” of things to do was to have a cup of hot chocolate with me. As we sat together we made a plan of how to carry out our project with our limited amount of time. (Notice the cute little overnight bag in the background. :)) “How about if we bake the brownies while we watch the movie this evening. Let them cool overnight, then early in the morning we can make our “Brownie Christmas Trees,” I persuaded. “Okkkeeeee,” Anna replied with a sweet giggle and jumped up to snag the brownie mix.
Once we had our aprons on we continued to mix up and bake our boxed brownies. Oh, the scent of brownies baking is so heavenly! Unfortunately we couldn’t dig into them after taking them out of the oven. So sad!
Bright and early next morning, out came little Miss Baker/Decorator ready to get those brownies made into Christmas trees.
- First we placed some newspapers atop the tablecloth.
- Got out all the items needed
- Brought over the pan of brownies
- Began making an assembly line of our creations
We took the lid off of our 9×13 pan of brownies only to find a little elf had been in the our kitchen sometime through the night. And that little elf had cut all the brownies into rectangles.
We needed squares!!!!
This was a bit of an obstacle to work around, but we took on the challenge with smiles on our faces.
The Christmas trees started lining up. Anna looked up at me and said, “Gramma, this is so fun. Let’s do it again!” I replied with a smile and a nod and a kiss on top of her head.
“Anna, we are making memories. I’m so glad you brought your crafting ingredients for us to work together.” And I grabbed a tissue from my pocket and dabbed under my eyes so that my mascara wouldn’t run.
- 1 brownie mix
- 1 egg
- vegetable oil
- water
- 1 can of white frosting
- green food coloring
- yellow food coloring
- Christmas candy canes. (Tiny ones work best to push into the brownies.)
- Sprinkles
- ¼ C powdered sugar
- 2 decorator's frosting bag with a large star tip and ribbon tip or something similar.
- Bake brownie mix according to directions. Cool.
- Cut brownies into squares, then each square into a triangle. Set aside
- Divide up frosting into 2 bowls. ¼ of the can for the yellow and ¾ of the can into green.
- Color the frosting. You may need to add a little powdered sugar to stiffen frosting.
- Apply green first, then the yellow star. Finish with the sprinkles.
- Break the candy cane and push into the bottom of the tree.
- Wala! Christmas trees. Happy smiles and big sweet tooth! Oh what fun it is to create!
Merry Christmas!
P. S. My hope is that someday when Anna is all grown up she will remember creating Christmas brownie trees at my kitchen table and sipping on a cup of hot chocolate with me.
Not a fan of peppermint? I use cherry flavored candy canes but there’s umpteen different flavors and colors to choose from. Maybe each child could have their own flavor and/or color unless there’s a zillion kids, then let each family pick a flavor/color. The point is to have fun together, not to complicate things.