SNACK:

Pretzel Tree:

Arrange pretzels on a plate like a tree. We decorate ours with butterscotch chips as well to be autumn leaves.

FOOD

Chocolate Cupcakes with Chocolate Trees:
Melt chocolate chips or two blocs of semi-sweet chocolate in the microwave (in 30 second intervals, pressing the chocolate each time to test whether it is fully melted) and put the melted chocolate in a ziplock bag, cut a small slit on one corner of the plastic bag and squeeze into tree shapes on wax paper, let the chocolate harden in the fridge and then carefully peel off and stick in the chocolate cupcakes or muffins. We made orange chocolate mini muffins!.

BREAKFAST:

Anything With Apples:

Trees can grow lots of delicious fruits and nuts. An apple is usually easy to find at grocery stores and most kids will eat them, but feel free to add any tree fruit or nut to your breakfast. Add to pancakes and muffins, mix into oatmeal or yogurt, or simply chop or slice and serve along side your regular breakfast.

LUNCH:

Salad Trees:

We cut pieces from a tube or refrigerated pizza dough (Pillsbury) and arranged them on the baking tray in different ways to let them cook into trunk and branch shapes. I sprinkled the dough with Italian seasoning and Parmesan cheese and garlic powder for extra flavour and a bark like look. Once they are cooked get your kids to decorate them like trees using spinach leaves, cheese strings, dried cranberries (or fresh berries whichever your child would prefer) etc.

Cookie Leaves:
make your favourite sugar or butter cookies (we used Nigella Lawson’s recipe: Sugar Cookie Cut-Out Recipe | Nigella Lawson | Food Network) and then use leaf cookie cutters or cut free hand to create leaves. When they are cooked and cooled get your kids to paint them using icing tinted green. We made acorns too and used chocolate icing for those!

Photo: C. Wright