I’ve been busy so left it a little late to plan the gifts for prep/kinder teachers the children wanted to make. So I looked back through the Love Santa recipes and found Anna’s tiny Christmas puddings 🙂

These will be easy enough to make quickly, I figured, and the kids could be involved in every step – and enjoy the final decorating phase. So this is what our final gifts to the kinder teachers looked like:

Tiny Christmas puddings ready to be wrapped in cellophane

Making tiny Christmas puds

And this is what we did to make them…

I bought a fruit cake from the supermarket that we have enjoyed many times – it’s just a homebrand cake but it is moist and not too heavy. I’m not a huge fan of the dark traditional Christmas cakes as I find them too heavy and dry, but you could certainly use one if you, like my husband, do like them.

Ingredients

Prepared fruit cake – bought or home made!
yoghurt
icing sugar
red & green jelly babies
red & green smarties

Quantities will depend on how many puddings you want to make 🙂 I used about half a cup of icing sugar and 1.5 tablespoons of yoghurt and most of a purchased 1 kg fruit cake.

Small packets of jelly babies and/or smarties should be enough as long as there is enough red and green ones in there!

Instructions…

Cut the cake – slice off about 3cm piece

Slice off a generous piece of cake

Cut the slice into smaller pieces. Roll each piece into a ball – actually, you’ll need to form the shape as it will fall apart if you try rolling it.

Not very glamourous at this stage – balls of fruit cake

Put the cake balls into the fridge for a while – I left them there overnight. This helps them firm up a little so they are easier to work with.

As the balls were fiddlier and less stable than I expected, I also tried do big pieces to effectively make small cakes for my son’s teachers. These were also easier for little fingers to decorate (and quicker to prepare!).

Small Christmas cakes, decorated and gift wrapped

Slice up the jelly babies – making small red circles and long, thin green strips. Cut the green smarties in half.

Whole or sliced, jelly babies and smarties are colourful

Mix the yoghurt and icing sugar to a reasonably thick mixture.

Spoon some icing over the cake balls.

Decorate the tiny puddings with the red and green lollies. I created a holly effect but my son just had fun making the cakes colourful!

My son enjoyed adding lots of colour to the small Christmas cakes!