How to Make Silly Dessert Sheep for Kids

One thing about having a blog is that it is a good excuse to play with some creative ideas regarding recipes. Although we love dessert and would eat it even if it was ugly, we wanted to experiment with making a silly dessert that would be great for a kid’s birthday party, family picnic, or as a fun cooking activity for kids. We saw a picture of some silly dessert sheep and thought it would be fun to try it ourselves.

Experimenting to Make Silly Dessert Sheep:

We saw a few different versions of these sheep, but we found each of the directions to be either a bit confusing or include things that we would never eat (like dates.) Plus, some of the sheep that we saw used toothpicks to hold them together. Since we planned on bringing them to a picnic with small children, we wanted to try to put them together without a choking hazard.
Plus, who wants to pick wood out of your dessert when eating them?

We thought this might be a disaster, but it seemed like fun to try! We started by gathering our ingredients.

Next, we melted butter in a large pot, added the marshmallows, and cooked them down to create our “glue.” After turning off the stove, we stirred in our Cheerios. This was very similar to making Rice-Krispie treats.

Assembling the Sheep:

One of the recipes that we saw suggested that you take a spoonful of warm Cheerios and create some holes for the legs and the head while it was still pliable and then glue them on later with chocolate. So we waited for it to cool enough that we could handle the mixture and created small balls.

We used thin pretzel sticks for the legs and started to poke them into the Cheerio ball. And guess what? They stuck! This was going to be easier than we thought!

For the head, we used chocolate-covered almonds. We had no idea if they were going to actually stick to the Cheerios. We thought we might have to melt some marshmallows or chocolate to make them stay. But just like the pretzel legs, we pushed them into the circle while it was still a bit warm and they didn’t budge!

This was so exciting, we did not have to use any toothpicks or odd ingredients that a kid would not want to eat.

As the Cheerios cooled, we did notice that it was becoming harder and harder to push in the head and legs. So we took the pot back to the stove and warmed it up again. And we were back in the sheep making business.

Experimenting with Brown Silly Sheep:

After we finished our first batch, we were worried that we did not have enough for our picnic. We decided to make another batch and add some melted chocolate to the Cheerios to see if we could make some brown sheep also.

While we were able to make a few of them, this was much harder. The chocolate made them less sticky and they fell apart much easier. Next time we are going to get some chocolate Cheerios in addition to the regular ones so we can have both brown and tan sheep.

Overall, this was much easier than we had anticipated. It would be a great activity to do with a group of kids. Not only are they silly, but they taste delicious!