I’ve ‘copped out’ of Baker Day three years in row. By copped out, I mean that rather than taking the time and effort to put something together I’ve simply purchased 50 packets of crisps and sent them along to school on the day. Genius right? Right!

No really, its a great option. But, with this year being our last year at the beautiful school we’ve been at, we wanted to do something a little different. This year called for a little more effort and a lot of sugar.

If you have followed our journey on various other platforms, you will know that we switched to real food just over a year ago. The change has made the biggest difference to us all and it’s something we continue to enjoy. Making these changes at home was the easy part, deciding how we were going to handle everything outside of home was slightly more challenging.

At first I tried to provide replacements for any treats my girls might be offered outside of home, which was exhausting and frustrating. I couldn’t keep up which led to me feeling as though everything I was working so hard on at home was being undone on a weekly basis. Because of the challenges I have experienced with food, I am also very aware of the psychological connotations that can go along with it. Food is to be enjoyed, it is a massive part of our social life and I never want my girls to feel as though that part of their life is being compromised because of how we choose to eat. I wanted my girls to feel proud of what they were presenting, not that they can’t be proud of the healthier options… I just think it’s something to be aware of and it’s a line I tread carefully. I want their bodies and their minds to be healthy eaters – I am all too familiar with the idea of ‘forbidden foods’ and the guilt that all of that creates.

And that friends, is why even after making a massive daily effort to do otherwise,  we chose to send a sugar loaded treat to school on Friday. 

We went with these delicious popcorn balls. I thought they were going to be a nightmare to make (especially when I heard that we had to make 70 of them) but I was so pleasantly surprised. All of the ‘cooking’ is done in the microwave and the oooey-gooey marshmallow isn’t nearly as sticky and nightmarish to work with as one would think. It also doesn’t harden as fast as I thought it would so we had plenty of time to mould our popcorn balls before it was too late. The recipe makes around 18 balls – we made four batches and ended up with 69 fo them in total.

Note: make one batch at a time otherwise you are going to battle to coat 
the popcorn evenly and your mixture may harden before you are done

Marshmallow-Popcorn Balls

• 1 packet mini marshmallows
• 1 packet salted microwave popcorn
• 1/4 cup butter
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• hundreds and thousands
• paper cupcake holders

Method:

Pop your microwave popcorn according to packet instructions and place in a mixing bowl

Place butter in a large microwave safe dish and heat for 30 seconds / until melted

Add marshmallows and vanilla to butter and heat again until marshmallows begin to puff

Mix marshmallow mixture until well combined (make sure you use a heatproof spatula – I used wooden chopsticks so that I could throw them away once we were done)

Pour your marshmallow mixture over the popcorn and mix until popcorn is completely coated.

Using wet hands, gently mould your mixture into balls and place them into your cupcake holders.

I put my girls in charge of the sprinkles which worked really well and created only a very manageable amount of mess.

Let me know if you give these a go and how they turn out.